


Follow the Light

by lilbluednacer



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Archie and Veronica basically adopt Betty, Bartender Jughead, Betty Cooper-centric, Betty deals with all the trauma being in a freaking cult would cause, Cult Survivor Betty, F/M, Food Issues, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Injuries, New York City, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prescription Medication, Recreational Drug Use, Scars, Self-Harm, Slow Burn Bughead, Therapy, background varchie, like glacially slow, mentions of abuse, recovering from trauma, writer jughead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:53:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 55,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23162032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilbluednacer/pseuds/lilbluednacer
Summary: Betty thought escaping The Farm would be the hard part. No one told her the hard part would be surviving everything that comes after.
Relationships: Archie Andrews & Betty Cooper, Archie Andrews/Veronica Lodge, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 216
Kudos: 219
Collections: 7th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	1. Escape

**Author's Note:**

> This focuses on what happens to someone after they leave a cult so massive trigger warnings for all the emotional trauma that would entail, additional trigger warnings are all in the tags.

The building appears as if out of nowhere, nestled in a little valley behind a highway ramp. It’s still dark out, even though she’s sure she’s been walking for what feels like hours and hours. She has no way to know of course, no watch, no phone, all she has on her is her old driver’s license, stolen from the safe in Edgar’s office and shoved into the bra she’s wearing under her thin white dress. 

She’s so cold she isn’t even shivering anymore, doesn’t have enough energy for it. Her body’s gone numb, muscles so heavy she can barely lift one foot in front of the other, toes painful with blisters from wearing Polly’s sneakers, a size too small for her own feet, blood running down her heels, but it’s better than being barefoot. There are too many rocks or tree roots out here she could step over and she's not letting her escape get ruined by something as stupid as a splinter or a broken toe.

She stands at the edge of the trees, she’s been following the highway from a safe distance, moving parallel to it but out of sight from all those headlights. She wasn’t even sure she’d make it this far, to a place she didn’t even know existed. But she used to live in civilization, she knows that highways have exits for bathrooms, restaurants, gas stations, places for people who need things. 

Like hospitals.

This one is small, blindingly white in the early morning twilight. From her spot among the trees she can see a driveway, sliding glass doors, a big red cross on a sign high enough for drivers to see from the road. She’s so close now, all she has to do is walk out of the trees, cross the driveway and go up to the door.

Everything hurts, she’s exhausted and dizzy and so cold she wants to lie down in the dirt and go to sleep but she can’t, not when she’s this close, not when she’s risked everything to get this far.

Betty Cooper walks out of the woods and towards the light.

The automatic doors whoosh open for her, revealing a small lobby, a triage window straight ahead with a tired looking nurse sitting behind a desk. No one is sitting in any of the chairs to her left and the sound of her too-small shoes squeak on the tiled floor as she approaches the nurse’s station.

“Excuse me,” she whispers, because even now, after everything, she’s still her mother’s polite little girl.

The nurse takes one look at her and her eyes go a little wide as she gets up from her chair and moves around to stand next to Betty. She hasn't seen a mirror in who knows how long and can only imagine what she must look like, what the nurse thinks of this pale, bedraggled girl wearing a dirt streaked torn dress and bloodied shoes.

“Hi there.” The nurse’s voice is low and rich, Betty wants to wrap herself up in it and go to sleep. “Are you okay, honey?”

The walls are starting to spin, the bright lights overhead making Betty’s eyes water. “I need help,” she chokes out, clutching the desk with both hands.

“Okay,” the nurse says gently. “You’re in a hospital honey, we’re here to help you.”

“No!” Tears spill down her cheeks. “Not me! You have to, you have to help my sister!”

The nurse puts a hand on Betty’s shoulder, ignoring the way she flinches. “Okay honey. Where’s your sister?”

Everything is a blur of white, lights and her tears turning the hospital waiting room into a kaleidoscope. Betty sucks in a breath but the air doesn’t want to stay in her lungs, she doubles over and the nurse wraps her hand around her arm. Betty can hear her calling out for someone, a doctor maybe, or another nurse, but Betty doesn’t follow because she’s too cold to move anymore and she left, she left Polly there and oh god, this was a mistake, she should’ve stayed, she should’ve, she should’ve -

“Okay, it’s going to be okay. Come with us, we need to make sure you’re not hurt and then we’ll talk about your sister.” Betty’s too weak to fight, she lets the nurse and a young man wearing matching scrubs pull her down the hallway and into an empty exam room.

The nurse hustles Betty onto the exam table, her hands touching Betty’s forehead, her throat, her wrists. “Everything’s going to be okay, honey. Can you tell me what happened? Were you in an accident?”

“No,” Betty chokes out. “He, he has my sister.”

The nurse’s hands are warm on her shoulders. “Who has your sister?”

Betty starts the shake, so hard her teeth clack together. “A bad man.”

“Okay,” the nurse says slowly. “Tell me about the bad man.”

“You need to listen to me,” Betty says frantically. “I swear I’m not crazy. My sister, Polly, Polly Cooper, got involved with these, these _people_ , they live in this commune upstate and at first I just thought they were hippies but the guy who’s in charge, he’s a bad person, okay, he’s a criminal and he’s dangerous and I swear to god I’m not making this up, I tried to get Polly to leave but she wouldn't listen to me and Edgar, that’s their leader, he did something to me and I couldn’t get out but I’m not crazy, honestly, I’m not crazy, it took me weeks to figure out how to escape and I walked all night to get here and you have to help me, please help me, please help me” -

“Okay, okay, it’s okay honey.” The nurse looks over her shoulder at the guy in scrubs, who’s scribbling something on a clipboard, and tells him to call the police.

Betty’s temperature is taken and that sets off a flurry of motion from the nurse. The first thing to go is her dress, which Betty somehow didn’t even notice was damp. The nurse helps her change into a gown and Betty remembers her ID, she reaches into the cup of her bra and pulls it out, slips it into the nurse’s hand after she ties the strings of the gown.

The nurse glances down at her license and back up at Betty, and gives her a gentle smile. “Well hello, Elizabeth. Let’s get you warmed up, okay?”

“Are they looking for my sister?” Betty asks through chattering teeth. “I can tell them how to get there. Go back through the woods. North, no northwest, along the highway until it forks, under the bridge” -

“Okay, okay, it’s alright, they're searching the area” -

“They have to be fast, and quiet, they already know I’m gone, they’re going to be watching -

“It’s going to be okay” -

“Stop saying that!” Betty shrieks. “It’s not okay, he has my sister and these, these _followers_ , okay, and they’re all fucking _crazy_ and I did everything I could and I couldn’t win, I couldn’t beat him and they’ll never leave him, they love him and I tried, I tried but I couldn’t, I couldn’t do anything and I had to get out before, before…”

She finally collapses, right into the nurse, who catches her and pulls her back onto the bed. Betty gulps for air and tries not to throw up, choking on sobs as she thinks about Polly’s pale face, her weak body, her dreamy smile, Polly kissing her cheek and whispering, _it’s okay, it’s okay Betty._

“It’s okay,” the nurse says, her hand firm and warm between Betty’s shoulder blades. “I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

Betty is wrapped in a thin blanket that’s warmer than it looks. They take vials of blood, slip a needle into the crook of her right elbow and hook her up to an IV. A doctor comes in and examines her blue tipped fingers, her lymph nodes, her bleeding blistered feet. He asks her question after question, where does she live, when was her last period, how long was she outside, who is the president, when was the last time she ate or drank, and Betty doesn’t know any of the answers.

The nurse stays with her the whole time, her warm hands touching Betty’s wrist, her shoulder, the back of her neck. Betty wonders what’s wrong with her, why she isn’t fighting, or crying, screaming at them to go find Polly already, and then she realizes that they must have put something in the IV because nothing hurts anymore and she can’t feel anything except a calm wave of resignation.

The doctor disappears for a while and when he comes back there’s a cop with him, a middle aged guy wearing a trench coat over his uniform, holding a cup of coffee and a folder under one arm. He seats himself on a rolling stool and introduces himself to Betty before leaning forward, squinting at her face.

“So, Miss Cooper. You’ve been gone a long time, your friends have been really worried about you.”

Betty stares at him. “What?”

He spins the folder around, flips it open and holds it out to her. “This is you, isn't it? Elizabeth Cooper, reported missing twenty-one months ago in New York City.” 

Betty stares at the photograph, shocked to see her own face looking up at her. It’s her high school senior year portrait, that blue background every school photo has. It looks exactly how she remembers it; her hair is pulled back in a high ponytail, she’s wearing a pink cashmere sweater with pearls sewn around the neckline and little rose gold studs in her ears. She’s smiling into the camera, the face of a girl with a bright future, a girl who’s never known what it was like to starve, to be locked in a small room for days, to be psychologically broken down into her darkest sharpest parts.

“Missing?” Betty repeats weakly.

He nods and takes the folder back, flips through it a little. “You were reported missing by your roommate Archie Andrews after failing to return to New York University for your spring semester of junior year after visiting your family upstate, is that correct?”

Betty stares at him, overwhelmed. “Archie reported me missing?”

“That seems to be the case.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and frowns. “Will you excuse me please, I need to make a phone call.”

 _Archie’s out there. Archie reported her missing._

“Why?” she asks tremulously. “What’s going on?”

“I need to call a colleague,” he says vaguely, and nods to the nurse before pointing at the door, where Betty can see a uniformed cop standing outside. “He stays right there.”

The nurse puts a protective arm around Betty. “Yes sir, officer.”

The cop gives Betty a look she doesn’t know how to interpret before rushing out of the room. Betty curls into herself, still reeling from the revelation that Archie is out there somewhere, Archie talked to the cops, Archie Archie Archie Archie -

“Shh,” the nurse murmurs. “Shh, honey” -

“He needs to come back!” She tries to force the words out but she’s too drugged up and tired to manage anything but a whisper.

“Hang on honey.”

“I need to talk to him!” she insists in a thin voice.

“Just give him a minute.”

Betty lies there, chewing at her bottom lip until the cop comes back, his partner right outside the door. He doesn’t bother sitting back down, instead he leans casually against a cabinet and rubs his eyes.

“Miss Cooper, I’ve been informed that your case is being transferred. It’s - a jurisdictional issue.”

Betty blinks heavily at him. “What?”

“The detective who initially handled your case ended up giving it over to the FBI” -

Betty gapes at him. “The FBI?”

“Yes, once your disappearance was linked to the group your sister joined it no longer became merely a missing person’s case. The feds swooped in and took over, they’re sending an agent to come interview you. In the meantime we’ll leave an officer outside the door until we can determine the probability of a risk to your safety.”

“But what about Polly?”

“We have officers searching the woods around the hospital and we’re setting up blockades. If your sister is out there, we’ll find her.”

*

The day drags on. The nurses switch shifts and someone else comes in, an older woman who doesn’t say much but checks on Betty’s vitals every half an hour with razor-like precision. The cop stays right outside her room, she can see the blue edge of his shoulder through the little glass window in the center of the door. 

Betty drifts off into a half-sleep for awhile and dreams she’s back in the woods, in that fucking dress, trying to find Polly, like when they were kids playing hide and seek only it isn’t fun and she can’t find Polly where is Polly where is she where is she where is she -

The door bangs open and she jerks awake, wincing at the way her IV pulls at her arm. The new nurse has come back with a man she doesn't know, he locks eyes on Betty and strides towards her, his hands jammed in the pockets of his overcoat.

“Hi,” he says, eyes roaming over her face. “It’s nice to meet you, Elizabeth. I’m Special Agent Charles Smith.”

 _Charles Smith_ , it sounds so fake she’d laugh if she wasn’t so drugged up. “Where’s your badge?”

He cocks his head at her, one hand reaching into the inside pocket of his coat. “Smart girl. Most people wouldn’t ask.”

“I’m not most girls,” she shoots back.

He withdraws his badge, flips it open and hands it over to her. “Yes, I’m gathering that.”

His photo looks just like him in person, same perfect bone structure and sandy hair, same serious expression on his face. The name matches, the serial number looks legit, the seal is right, she examines every part of his badge but can’t find anything wrong so she gives it back to him. He slips it back into his coat and drags the stool over to sit on the left side of her bed while the nurse stands in the corner of the room, arms crossed over her chest.

“First of all,” he says. “I’d like to sincerely apologize for what you’ve been through.”

Betty is so caught off guard she doesn’t know how to respond. “It’s not your fault.”

He looks down at his hands and then at the IV in her arm. “I’m going to need to ask you some questions about what happened.”

“I know.”

He nods and reaches into his coat again, this time pulling out a small composition notebook and a pen. “Now, I’ve taken statements from the nurses and the doctor who admitted you. You said that you ran away from a bad man who had your sister?”

Betty nods, curling her fingers around the edges of the blanket. “Have they found her yet?”

“Your sister? Polly, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. And can you tell me the name of the group she was with?”

“I don’t know if it has a real name. Everyone just calls it The Farm.”

“Okay, Betty.” He's so calm, like this is just another day for him, which she guesses it is. She wonders if he’s immune to it at this point, the shock of violence, the horrors that human beings inflict onto one another. “And can you tell me where The Farm is?”

“I already told them how I walked here from there.”

He nods. “I understand. I was wondering if you could tell me how you got there.”

“How I got to The Farm?”

“That’s right.”

Betty rubs her eyes. “I don’t know, this was the third place we’ve been staying at since I was with The Farm, they’d drive us at night on buses with the windows blacked out.”

“I think you misunderstood me,” he says gently. “I’m aware they change locations frequently, I was wondering if you could tell me how you got to them initially.”

“Like, when I left NYU?”

He crosses one leg casually over the other, like asking her how she joined a cult is no big deal. “Yes. That could be very helpful in tracking them, any known locations would be useful.”

“I… I took a bus. I called Polly from the station when I got there” -

“Got where?”

“Syracuse.”

“Okay, good, not that far.” 

Betty realizes for the first time that she doesn’t know exactly where she is, she walked south for hours, whatever mental map she had in her head was formed by sight and landmarks, not streets and cities.

“Agent Smith?”

“Yes, Betty?”

“Where are we?”

“Excuse me?”

“This isn’t Syracuse, right?”

He gives her a sympathetic look. “Correct. We’re outside of Ithaca.”

“Oh.”

He scribbles something in his notebook. “Okay, let's get back to your story, you said you took a bus to Syracuse. And then?”

Betty picks at her nails. “Polly picked me up. I… I don’t know how she convinced Edgar to let her take the car.”

“Edgar Evernever? He’s their leader, right?”

Betty’s stomach drops. “You know about him.”

Agent Smith leans forward a little, looking very serious. “I’ve been investigating The Farm for over three years, but haven’t managed to pin them down. Everytime we get close…”

He makes a motion like sand slipping through his fingers and Betty nods. “Edgar’s good at getting away.”

“Yes, that seems to be the case. Okay, let’s get back to the facts. Your sister picks you up at the bus station, with Edgar’s permission, in a car he gave her?”

“Yeah,” she mumbles.

“Okay. Then what happened?”

“She… Polly blindfolded me.”

“For the ride?”

“She said Edgar told her it was for my own good.”

“And you let her?”

The implication makes her prickle. “She’s my sister.”

“I understand,” he says gently. “So you trusted her?”

To Betty’s horror her eyes fill with tears. “Yes.”

There’s a sudden commotion outside her door and Charles frowns. He hops up from his stool and places one hand on his hip, where Betty assumes a gun is hiding under his coat.

“One second,” he says sharply, and nods at the nurse before walking to the door and cracking it open.

There’s a burst of loud voices and Agent Smith quickly goes out into the hall and shuts the door before Betty can see what’s going on. The nurse stays right where she is and she and Betty both stare at the door, the little window not enough to see much beyond the back of the cop that’s been standing there all day. After about thirty seconds the door opens and Agent Smith comes back in with someone else following behind him; he steps to the side and -

And everything else goes away, because Archie Andrews is standing in front of her.

He looks just like she remembered, right down to his haircut and the grey Andrews Construction sweatshirt he’s wearing under his jacket. He gapes at her, the color draining out of his face as he reaches up to shove one hand through his hair, his eyes darting around between her face and the IV in her arm and her bandaged feet.

He glances sideways at Agent Smith. “That’s her.”

Agent Smith nods, and pats Archie on the shoulder in a way that implies this isn’t the first time they’ve met. “I have to go make some phone calls. I’ll let the two of you catch up, I’ll check in with you later, Betty.”

He says something under his breath to the nurse and she murmurs something back before following him out of the room, and then it’s just Archie, looking at her like a lost little boy and if she wasn’t on painkillers or sedatives or whatever they gave her she’s sure she’d be crying hysterically just at the sight of him, but all she can feel is a distant sense of wonder. 

“Betty,” he breathes, and stumbles forward until he’s standing by the side of the bed, his eyes glassy.

She can’t really believe it -Archie, here, in her hospital room, standing right in front of her. “How did you know I was here?”

Archie’s face scrunches up, like he’s trying not to cry. “The cops called me. They… they wanted me to identify you.”

“Oh.” Betty whispers. That makes sense.

Archie blinks rapidly, his hands flexing like he’s trying to stop himself from punching the wall. “Can I hug you?”

“Yeah,” she murmurs.

He swallows and bends down, getting one knee up on the bed as his arms come around her, and she leans into the hug without even realizing it, like it’s an automatic somatic response, muscle memory or something, like her body instantly remembers what it feels like to be held by Archie.

Something inside her breaks and her hands reach out to clutch at his sweatshirt, pulling him closer until he swings his legs up onto the bed and stretches out on his side as he holds her to his chest, careful not to pull her hard enough to tug on her IV. One of his hands splays out between her shoulder blades and the other one cups her cheek. Archie leans his head down to rest his forehead against hers and Betty lets out a shuddering sigh that ends in a choked sob.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“Archie.” She blinks and hot tears slip down her cheeks.

He runs his thumb along her cheekbone. “I knew you’d come back,” he whispers fervently. “I knew it.”

Betty’s face crumples up as she cries. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” Archie croons. “Don’t.”

“But I promised you,” she sniffs. “I promised you I wouldn't go but I couldn’t - I had to try” -

“I know,” he reassures her. “I know you, Betty. I understand.”

Betty looks at him though a blur of tears. “You aren’t mad?”

A muscle in his jaw tics. “Yeah, I’m mad. I’m just not mad at you.”

“Oh.” There’s not much energy behind it but she can’t stop crying anyway, the tears just keep rolling down her cheeks and Archie catches them with his thumb.

“Betty.” His voice cracks, just a little. “Did they hurt you?”

She tucks her head under his chin and pushes her face into his throat, feeling the warmth of his skin and his pulse against her cheek. She doesn’t say anything, the words for what happened to her locked up tight inside her heart. She doesn’t want him to know what they did to her, she doesn’t want him to think about her that way, cold and hungry and afraid. Archie’s arm tightens around her but he doesn’t say anything either and they just lie there breathing together for a moment before she manages to pull herself together a little.

“Can we talk about something else?” she asks softly, lifting her head.

Archie brushes a few strands of hair off her forehead. “Sure. What do you want to talk about?”

“Tell me what’s going on with you. Catch me up on what I missed.”

“Oh yeah, okay.” One of his hands is still in her hair, absentmindedly running his fingers through it. “Well, I graduated.”

Betty smiles through her tears. “Of course you did.”

“Yeah, it was, it was a little tough but I did it. Mom flew out for the ceremony, you should’ve seen her. Cried through the whole thing.”

“She must’ve been so proud of you.”

“Yeah.” Archie gives her a watery smile and she knows he’s thinking about his dad. Losing Fred right before senior year of high school still hurts her to think about, she can’t imagine what it feels like for Archie.

“Are you still in the city?”

“Yeah, I’m actually, um… living with someone.”

Betty raises one eyebrow. “Like a girlfriend?”

He looks a little embarrassed and Betty wonders if he feels guilty, that he’s moved on with his life while she was out there suffering every day for almost two years. “Yeah. Do you remember Veronica Lodge?”

Betty closes her eyes for a moment, thinking. “The name sounds familiar but I can’t place her.”

“I’m not sure you guys ever met. She’s friends with Josie” -

“Josie McCoy?” Josie and Archie met first semester sophomore year, she was in his music composition class. Betty only met her a few times but she remembers a smoky voice, a headband with glittery kitten ears, dark slim fingers strumming Archie’s guitar.

“Yeah, she and Ronnie - Veronica - met doing a musical around when you… anyway, Josie introduced us.”

“She must be pretty great,” Betty ventures. “If you guys are living together now.”

“Yeah, she’s amazing,” Archie says earnestly. “I… I had kind of a hard time after you, and she was… she was there when I needed someone.”

“Archie, you’re allowed to have a girlfriend,” she says gently. “I… I always wanted you to be happy.”

He cups the back of her head. “It’s kind of hard to be happy when your best friend is missing and you don't know if you’ll ever see her again.”

“Archie” -

“I’m sorry,” he says quickly. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s okay,” she murmurs. 

“Anyway,” he says, giving her a hopeful smile. “You’re here now. Oh man, Josie is going to freak out, she’s in the city too. She and V and one of Ronnie’s friends from high school are all super tight now. And Jughead, too” -

“Who?” He’s talking so fast she can barely keep up, not sure if V and Ronnie are separate people or two different nicknames for Veronica. “Did you say Jarhead?”

“Jughead,” he corrects her. “It’s a nickname. You’ll like him, he’s a total lit nerd.”

A faint laugh escapes her lips. “And you’re friends with him?”

“He grew on me,” Archie laughs. “He bartends at Ronnie’s bar when he isn’t writing, we’ve gotten to know each other pretty well.”

“Veronica owns a bar?”

“Yeah, her family’s business owns a ton of properties, it’s like, in her blood.” Archie says casually. “She owns a few clubs, too.”

“Wow,” Betty starts to say, and they both freeze as the door opens.

She sits up quickly next to Archie as Agent Smith comes into the room, flanked by two police officers in uniform. They all have matching grim expressions on their faces and panic rises up so fast in her she feels sick, Archie’s arm tight around her shoulders.

“Did you find her?” she croaks. “Did you find Polly?”

Agent Smith at least has the decency to look her in the eye when he breaks her heart. “We’ve looked everywhere. I’m sorry, we have to consider the possibility that they made it to Canada.”

“Canada?” Betty says in disbelief.

Agent Smith winces and holds up one hand like he’s trying to placate her. “We’re working with officials at the border” -

“Where’s my sister?” Betty shrieks.

It doesn’t matter anymore that she’s exhausted and drugged and bandaged, she messed up the one thing she was supposed to do, she was supposed to save Polly and she lost her, she failed, and Betty just _loses_ it, she lunges forward with a scream and the IV gets yanked right out of her arm.

Archie catches her and pulls her back with both arms around her middle and she kicks out, blind with panic, because she has to go, if they won’t find Polly than she will, she has to find her, she has to save her sister, and Archie’s shouting at her to stop and Agent Smith is yelling for a doctor and Archie’s hands pin her down on the bed as she finally goes limp, surrendering to the realization that she really did it.

She lost.

She bursts into tears and Archie’s still talking to her but she can’t hear what he’s saying because Polly’s gone and it’s all Betty’s fault and then -

 _Oh._ Something in her shoulder pinches and everything greys out to nothingness.


	2. Trapped in Another Cage

Betty wakes up feeling like her head’s been stuffed with cotton. She blinks open eyelids that feel like they each weigh a million pounds and warily looks around. She’s in another hospital room, lying on one of two beds. There’s a girl sitting on the other one with a wavy red bob and freckles, watching Betty curiously.

“Hi,” she says cheerfully. “You’re finally awake.”

“Where am I?” Betty asks, the words coming out thick like she’s talking through a mouthful of syrup.

“The fourth floor,” she answers, as if that’s supposed to mean something. “I’m Ethel.”

“Betty.”

The door opens and a nurse comes in holding a bundle of grey fabric. “Good morning ladies. Ethel, why don’t you go on down to breakfast, Miss Cooper here can join you in a bit.”

“Okay.” Ethel gives Betty a half-hearted wave and slides off her bed, trudges past the nurse and leaves.

The nurse walks forward and places the fabric at the foot of the bed, and Betty realizes it’s a pair of sweats. “Let's get you changed, honey.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Betty mumbles.

She doesn’t like this, not knowing where she is, she has no idea what’s happened since they knocked her out in the ER but from the way sunlight is streaming in through the window she assumes she slept all night.

The nurse leads her to a small attached bathroom and to Betty’s indignation the nurse stands right outside the doorway with her back to her while Betty strips and uses the toilet, like she’s a prisoner who can’t be trusted to pee on her own behind a locked door. Betty doesn’t look in the mirror when she washes her hands, she doesn’t want to see herself right now. There’s a bruise blooming in the crook of her right elbow around a band-aid and Betty winces at the memory of the needle tearing out of her arm.

The nurse watches her change into a pair of loose grey sweatpants and a grey crewneck sweatshirt, and gives her a pair of blue socks with little grips on the soles. “Come on, time for your meds.”

The nurse takes her down the hall to a little station with another nurse sitting behind a desk. She gives Betty a paper cup full of pills and between the two of them Betty doesn’t think she can fight back so she obediently takes them all and lets them examine her mouth to make sure she isn’t holding them under her tongue or in her cheek.

“You hungry?” the nurse asks. 

Betty isn’t but she allows herself to be led to a small cafeteria. The nurse sits Betty down at an empty table and she’s given a bowl of lumpy oatmeal. She drags her spoon through it and takes a tiny bite, swallows and tries not to gag. She can’t remember the last time she’s had a full meal but the idea of eating right now makes her feel sick. 

“Eat your breakfast,” the nurses coaxes.

“I don’t feel good,” Betty whispers.

The nurse looks unimpressed. “You going to eat it or not?”

Betty shakes her head and the nurse gets up, takes the bowl away and returns with a can of a supplement drink. She untwists the cap and slides it across the table to Betty, who picks it up and takes a cautious sip. It’s vanilla flavored, too sweet but tolerable, and it takes her almost ten minutes but she manages to drink it all.

“Good girl,” the nurse declares, giving Betty a bright smile, and Betty resists the urge to throw the empty can at her head. 

The nurse takes her to a room she calls the day room, which is just a room with a bunch of couches and chairs, a tv hanging on one wall, some board games and a few magazines lying around, windows that face the parking lot. 

“Your doctor will be here to check in with you later,” the nurse tells her, and then she leaves Betty there.

Betty looks around, a little relieved when she sees the girl with the red hair - Ethel, she reminds herself - sitting at a table with a boy playing some kind of game. Ethel waves enthusiastically and Betty makes her way over to her, feeling like she’s slogging through water, one of the pills they gave her must’ve been some kind of sedative.

“Hi Betty!” Ethel greets her enthusiastically when she sinks down into an open armchair.

“Hey.” Betty rubs her eyes, she feels like she could curl up and go back to sleep right here. “Ethel, right?”

“That’s me! This is Dilton.” Ethel nods at the boy sitting across the table from her. “Dilton, this is my new roommate, Betty.”

Dilton is small and dark haired, wearing glasses with thick black frames. “Greetings Princess,” he mumbles.

Betty blinks at him but he’s staring down at the game board. She looks at Ethel, who rolls her eyes good naturedly. “We’re playing Griffins and Gargoyles.”

Betty has no idea what that has to do with anything but it isn’t weirder than anything else she’s experienced in the past twenty-four hours so she shrugs and turns sideways in the chair so she can tuck her feet under her, hugging her arms around her knees. She can practically hear Edgar in her head, analyzing her body language, _tsk tsk, so defensive, Betty._

“Is that like Dungeons and Dragons?” she asks.

“G&G is far superior to Dungeons and Dragons,” Dilton says stiffly.

“But it has similar elements,” Ethel follows up quickly. “Do you want to play with us?”

“No thanks,” Betty murmurs, and when she sees Ethel’s face start to fall she adds, “I don’t mind watching.”

*

She spends the whole morning in the appropriately named day room, her thoughts spinning around in her head and dissolving like cotton candy while other patients play games and watch tv and have petty arguments around her. It’s pretty obvious what’s going on, she’s ended up in some kind of mental health ward, which should scare the shit out of her because she has no idea if she’s on a temporary hold or stuck here for the long term, and she wonders where the hell Archie is, if he left her here, went back to his nice happy life in the city with his beautiful, successful girlfriend.

And then she hates herself for thinking that way, because it isn’t Archie’s fault Betty did something incredibly stupid and had to suffer the consequences while he was out there just trying to live his life. He deserves to be happy.

He isn’t the one who left someone at the mercy of a monster.

They’re taken back to the cafeteria in a group for lunch. Betty sits with Ethel and Dilton because she doesn’t know where else to go, watching everyone get served a tray of the same meal - wilted romaine drowning in ranch, bruised looking apple slices and some kind of sandwich Betty thinks is a sloppy joe. Just looking at everything makes her feel sick and she doesn’t even bother going through the motions this time. She picks at the plastic hospital bracelet around her wrist until a nurse comes over and warns her that if she doesn’t start eating she’ll be given a can of a supplement drink instead.

Betty shrugs in response and ignores the sour look on the nurse’s face as she takes the tray away.

Across the table Ethel’s eyes have gone wide. “Are you one of those girls?”

“What girls?”

Ethel subtly points across the cafeteria at two tables, where girls and nurses are sitting at a ratio of three to one, the nurses blatantly watching the girls eat. Some of them look like walking skeletons but some of them look normal, the only clues that they’re sick the way their skin is a little sallow, their hair dull. A few of them are crying and one girl has her head buried in her arms while a nurse rubs her back. 

“No,” Betty says stiffly. “The food’s just disgusting.”

Ethel looks at the bones in Betty’s wrist, the ligaments standing out over the backs of her hands, but she doesn’t say anything. The nurse who took her tray away returns with a can of a supplement drink and pops the tab for her, places it in front of Betty and stands right there, like she’s not leaving until Betty drinks all of it.

Betty picks it up and closes her eyes, brings the can to her lips and pretends it’s a vanilla milkshake from Pop’s, and chugs down the whole thing.

*

She’s taken back to the dayroom after lunch, like a toddler being dragged around a daycare. Betty sits on the couch and pretends to read a copy of a three year old issue of People magazine so the other patients leave her alone. She can’t get the words to focus, she still feels like she’s in a fog of meditation that she can’t push through. After she’s been sitting there for twenty minutes the nurse who woke her up this morning comes into the room and Betty watches her over the top of the magazine as she walks over to the couch.

She stops in front of Betty and gently pulls the magazine out of Betty’ grip. “Come on honey, the doctor’s ready to see you.”

Betty is walked to an office and passed off at the door to an elegantly dressed woman with brown curly hair. “Hello Elizabeth, I’m Doctor Burble, please come in.”

“Betty,” she murmurs back, padding over to a chair across from the doctor’s desk and sinking into it.

“Of course,” Dr. Burble responds, sitting across the desk from her. “So, Betty. How are you feeling?”

Betty stares at her, of all the questions the doctor could’ve asked that wasn’t what she was expecting. “Tired.”

Dr. Burble nods. “You’re probably adjusting to the medication.”

Betty picks at her cuticles. “And why, exactly, am I being medicated?”

“You got very upset yesterday when you were in the ER. You hurt yourself.”

Betty rubs over the bruise on the inside of her elbow. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Would you like to talk about that?”

“Talk about what?”

“Why you got so upset.”

Betty stares at her. This woman doesn’t seem stupid but Betty can’t understand why she would ask her something so obvious. They must’ve told her about how Betty got there, the FBI must know where she is, right? 

“Betty?” Dr. Burble prompts.

Betty swallows, she’s tried not to think about it too hard today because every time she thinks about Polly out there, without her, Betty thinks she might be sick.

“They told me they would find her,” she mumbles.

“Her?”

“My sister.”

Dr. Burble flips through some papers on her desk. “Polly, right?”

_Ah, okay then_ , Betty thinks. So they have told her doctor about everything. Well, at least that makes it easier for her, knowing where she stands. That she doesn’t have to explain all over again.

“Right,” she confirms.

“You must be close,” Dr. Burble comments.

Betty nods, because there’s nothing she can say that will properly convey her feelings. Polly is her big sister, Betty worships her and loathes her equally, is infinitely jealous while also cursing the choices her sister has made and even then, Betty would die for her in a heartbeat, if it meant Polly would be safe. That kind of love is bigger than words.

Dr. Burble must be able to tell she isn’t getting anywhere because she switches tactics. “The nurses tell me you aren’t eating.”

“I’m drinking that stupid drink,” Betty mutters.

_Betty, Betty. So petulant,_ Edgar whispers in her head.

“Any particular reason for that?” Dr. Burble asks.

Betty shrugs. “I guess I’m not that hungry.”

“Betty. Betty, can you look at me?”

She doesn’t really want to but Betty forces herself to lift her head. Dr. Burble is giving her a patient look, her arms crossed over the desk. “It’s okay, Betty. You’re in a hospital. You’re safe. You can trust me.”

_Oh sweet Betty, you can’t trust anyone, not even yourself._

Betty digs her nails into her palms, thinking _shut up shut up shut up._

“Betty? Do you think you can tell me why you won’t eat the food?”

“It isn’t clean!” Betty bursts out, and looks down at her lap as her cheeks flame.

“Tell me about that,” Dr. Burble coaxes. “Tell me what that means, it isn’t clean.”

Betty can feel her eyes tearing up, which surprises her because she thought she was too drugged up to cry. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”

“Betty,” Dr. Burble chuckles. “Trust me. I know crazy when I see it and it ain’t you honey. But I also know you were in an incredibly stressful situation for an extended period of time, and that would affect anyone, no matter how sane they were.”

Betty relaxes a little as she processes that, it makes sense. She was there for almost two years and as much as she tried to resist she wasn’t strong enough, in the end. She couldn’t fight everything. She takes a shaky breath and blinks to clear her vision. “There were… rules. About the food.”

“Hmm. Well, I can understand if you got used to having to follow certain rules it might be hard to break that habit right away.”

“Right,” Betty sighs.

“Okay,” Dr. Burble says. “So we’re going to need to work on that. Try to remind yourself that you aren’t there anymore. You don’t have to follow their rules.”

“What do you mean?” Betty asks suspiciously. “When you say we’re going to work on that?”

“Well, I’d like to see you after they release you, outpatient. I’m not actually affiliated with this hospital, I have a private practice in Manhattan.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Agent Smith asked for me personally, not that the care here isn’t excellent but special cases like yours often require a certain kind of expertise. I work with The Bureau occasionally, Agent Smith called me this morning and told me about you - well, everything that wasn’t classified, anyway. He seemed concerned about you, which, given everything you’ve gone through is certainly understandable.” She shrugs and taps her pen against the desk. “So here I am.”

*

Archie shows up late in the afternoon, led into the dayroom by another nurse. Betty watches from the couch as he comes in, a shiny plastic badge that reads _Visitor_ pinned to his chest. He looks exhausted as he walks over to her, nodding at the nurse as she tells him he’s not allowed to take Betty out of the room.

“Hey.” Archie leans over to give Betty a hug as he sits down. “How’re you feeling?”

She stares at him. “How am I _feeling?_ ”

“Betty” -

“Gee, Archie, lets see. I woke up this morning not knowing where I was. They won’t let me use the bathroom unsupervised. The first thing they did was make me swallow a bunch of pills and I don’t even know what they are. Everyone is weirdly obsessed with how much I eat, I’m wearing hospital sweats, and oh yeah, Polly is still out there and meanwhile I’m stuck in here, drugged up and completely useless!”

The nurse who brought Archie in walks over to them. “Is everything okay here?”

Archie turns on the charm, giving the nurse an easy smile. “We’re fine, right, Betty?”

“Yeah,” Betty murmurs.

The nurse gives them a disapproving look but she walks away, and Archie lets out a sigh. “Jesus, Betty.”

“What?”

A muscle in his jaw twitches. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? If I was you I’d be freaking out too.”

“Where were you?” She doesn’t mean for the words to come out sounding so accusatory and she feels a wave of guilt when Archie winces.

“I’ve been trying to see you all day. I crashed at a motel last night and came back this morning but visiting doesn’t start until two and I had to meet with the doctor”-

“You talked to my doctor?”

“Yeah, it’s… I don’t know Betty, it’s complicated. It’s not like they can call your parents, and you aren’t a minor so it’s not like you’re getting tossed in the system but they want someone to release you to when they discharge you tomorrow, I mean, what are they supposed to do, throw you out on the street” -

“She told you I was getting discharged?”

“It’s not like they can keep you here forever,” he points out.

Betty realizes suddenly, that the apartment she lived in with Archie is gone, her parents are gone, Polly’s gone, there’s nowhere for her to go. She has no money, no things, nothing but an old driver's license and Polly’s bloody sneakers.

“I’ve been talking to Veronica,” Archie continues, before her panic can really build. “The guest room’s all set up and she can take the week off since she’s the boss anyway. Reggie and Jug can handle the bar for a few days, she wants to be around to help you adjust.”

Betty blinks at him, wondering if the drugs are making her hallucinate. “What’re you talking about?”

“You’re staying with us,” he explains. “I already talked about it with the staff here - I don’t really know what the protocol is for stuff like this, cus you’re not a minor but you were… you know, and Agent Smith is around here somewhere, he thought that would be good for you. To be with people you know.”

“You… want me to come live with you and Veronica?” she asks dumbly. 

Archie gives her a strange look, like her question makes no sense. “Well, yeah. You and I were living together when… and anyway, where else would you go?”

“Nice,” she mutters.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” Archie gives her the puppy dog eyes. “I just… I lost you once already. I can’t lose you again.”

“Arch,” she murmurs.

“Sorry.” Archie rubs his eyes. “It’s been a long twenty-four hours.”

“No kidding.”

He stretches out his arm tentatively, like she might duck away, and when she doesn’t he puts it around her shoulders and pulls her to his side. “It’ll be great, Betty. You love the city, remember?”

“What about Veronica?”

Archie shrugs. “We’ve got the room.”

“And she doesn’t care that your female best friend, the one who _joined a cult,_ will be living with you guys?”

“Betty, she… she saw what I went through, when you were gone. She knows how big this is. And besides, I really think you’ll get along. You’ll like her, she’s fun.”

“Fun,” Betty repeats dully.

Like she cares if she ever has fun again. She can’t even imagine having fun right now.

“So you’re okay with that? Staying with us?”

Betty bites her lip. “Archie, you don’t have to do this because you feel bad” -

“Hey.” Archie gives her a little shake. “We made a deal. We stick together, no matter what. You backing out of our deal, Betty?”

Betty looks up at him and tries not to cry. “No.”

She can’t break another promise to someone.

“C’mere.” Archie kisses her forehead. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Betty leans her head on his chest and closes her eyes. “Can you stay a little longer?”

He trails his fingers up and down her arm. “Sure.”

Archie stays with her until visiting hours end at six. He kisses her forehead when he leaves and gives her another hug, and promises he’ll see her tomorrow. Betty stands in the doorway of the dayroom watching him walk down the hall, and manages not to cry until he’s gone through a door that locks automatically behind him.

The dayroom nurse puts her arm around Betty and rubs her shoulder. “It’s okay sweetie, hang in there.”

Betty covers her face with her hands and sobs, she’s been barely keeping herself from falling apart all day and now with Archie gone there’s nothing left to hold her together. She’s flooded with terror suddenly, at the idea that he won’t come back for her, that he’ll change his mind, Veronica will make him change his mind, the hospital won’t discharge her, every terrible thing that could happen between now and tomorrow running through her head.

“It’s not, it’s not okay,” she chokes out, sucking in a breath as she starts to hyperventilate, because she’s trapped here and Archie’s gone and so is Polly, Betty’s lost everything and all she wants to do is let herself fall to the floor and scream. 

The nurse gently leads her out of the dayroom and down the hall to the nurse’s station. They put Betty on a stool behind the desk and give her a pill to swallow, and have her sit with her head on her knees while one of the nurses rubs her back until she stops crying.

“I’m sorry,” Betty sniffs, taking a tissue the nurse hands her.

“First day is the hardest,” the nurse says. “But hey, you’re going home tomorrow, right? You’re almost there.”

_I don’t have a home anymore_ , Betty thinks, and blows her nose.

She’s taken back to the group, who are lined up in a hallway to go back to the cafeteria, and is nudged towards Ethel, who sees Betty and holds out her hand. Betty’s too weak to resist, she lets the other girl clasp their palms together as they walk, occasionally wiping away a stray tear with her free hand.

“I cried the whole first week I was here,” Ethel whispers to her as they go into the cafeteria. “Everyone does.”

The pill must be kicking in because Betty sinks into her chair like she’s moving in slow motion, nodding vaguely as Ethel sits down next to her.

“Was that your boyfriend before?” Ethel asks shyly. 

Betty lets out a watery laugh. “No. Archie’s my best friend.”

“He’s so handsome,” Ethel sighs, her cheeks turning pink.

Betty shrugs, she’s known Archie since they were little kids and is years past her childhood crush, sometimes she forgets that other people aren’t immune to his body, his warm eyes, his big smile. “I guess, yeah.”

“You’re so lucky.” Ethel looks down at her hands. “I don’t have any friends.”

The confession stops Betty cold, she can’t imagine that, not having anybody, she’s lost a lot but now that the medication is kicking in she’s able to calm down and trust that Archie will come back for her, that she hasn’t lost absolutely everyone. “What about that boy you were playing with? Dilton?”

“I mean outside of here,” Ethel explains softly.

“That’s not true,” Betty says firmly. “They’re discharging me tomorrow.”

“Oh.” Betty doesn’t miss the way Ethel’s face drops. “That’s great. Congrats.”

“So, you do have a friend out there. Or, you will, once they let me out of here.”

Ethel looks so hopeful it makes Betty hurt a little. “Really? We’re friends?”

God, what Edgar would’ve done to a girl like this, someone who clearly has no self esteem, a girl desperate for scraps, someone who would take any affection offered and pay any price for it.

“Sure we are,” Betty tells her.

Ethel smiles. “Can I hug you?”

“Uh, sure.” Betty feels a little weird about it, but Ethel looks so happy so Betty lets her wrap her arms around her and it actually feels so good she hugs Ethel back.

Their dinner is brought to them and Betty picks up her fork, staring down at a mixed greens salad and a wedge of lasagna. She thinks about what the doctor said, that Betty doesn’t have to follow Edgar’s rules anymore, and carefully cuts off a tiny piece of lasagna and spears it with her fork. Her heartbeat speeds up, her body getting hot with anxiety just at the idea of doing this, flagrantly breaking the rules. They ate at The Farm but the food there was special, cleansed of negative energy, blessed by Edgar before being consumed. 

_You are only as pure as what you put in your body. Purity of mind, yes, spirit, yes, but also of body, for your body houses your soul and when we ascend together only the pure will rise. Don’t you want to ascend with us, Betty?_

Betty watches Ethel mindlessly eat and tries to remember what it was like before, when eating was just a normal thing, not some spiritualized ritual. She scans back in her head, remembering cereal eaten at the table before school, hot lunches, milkshakes and fries from Pop’s, cupcakes she baked for Archie’s birthday and bake sales and holidays.

A nurse comes over and looks down where Betty’s hand is clenched so hard around her fork her knuckles have turned white. “Everything okay here?”

Betty forces herself to bring the fork to her mouth, chews up the lasagna and swallows. “I’m fine.”


	3. Back Out in the World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started writing this fic a few weeks ago when I was having extremely bad anxiety and needed something to channel my feelings into/try to distract myself with writing. I wasn’t really planning on posting it in the beginning but things have been so crazy in the world lately that I figured why not, might as well. I’m so grateful for the support you guys are giving this.

“You must be so excited to go home,” Ethel says that night, when she and Betty have been tucked into bed and given a lights out warning like they’re at sleep away camp, huddling under the thin blankets sharing secrets in the dark.

Betty stares up at the ceiling. “I don’t have a home.”

“I thought you were getting discharged,” Ethel says tentatively.

“Yeah, my friend that was here, Archie, he’s picking me up.” Betty realizes as she says it that she doesn’t know the actual logistics of how she’s supposed to get to his and Veronica’s apartment and decides that’s a problem for tomorrow. “We lived together in college, I’m going to stay with him.”

“Where’d you go to school?” There’s a slight undertone of jealousy in Ethel’s voice.

“NYU. I only did three years though, well, two and a half technically.”

“You dropped out?”

“No, I… I had to do something, so I left. I thought I’d be gone for a few weeks, make it back for spring semester. It got… complicated.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Ethel murmurs. “Some people don’t like to share. We’re supposed to respect everyone’s process and not push until they’re ready, that’s what they tell us in group.”

“Group?”

“Group therapy,” Ethel explains.

At least Betty didn’t have to deal with _that_. “Hey Ethel?”

“Yeah?”

“How long have you been here?”

“I don’t know, around six months I think.”

Betty stares at the ceiling, she can’t imagine being stuck here another day, let alone months. “How do you do it?”

“What?” Ethel asks, like she genuinely doesn’t understand the question. 

“Be here,” Betty whispers. “Don’t you want to go home?”

“Things weren’t so great at home,” Ethel whispers back. 

“Oh.” Betty glances sideways at her but Ethel isn’t looking at her.

“My parents were having money problems,” Ethel continues. “I was having a hard time at school. It felt like things kept getting worse and worse and it got to a point where I couldn’t handle it anymore, I guess.”

“What do you mean?”

Ethel sits up in bed and after a moment she rolls up her sleeves and holds her arms out wrist up. Betty feels it like a punch to the gut as she looks at them, lines of pain carved into Ethel’s wrists.

Betty doesn’t know what to say, pain is such a private thing for her, she can’t imagine baring her scars like that to someone she’s only known for a day.

“It’s okay.” Ethel rolls her sleeves back down. “I know they scare people.”

“I’m not scared,” Betty tells her. “And if people are, then they’re idiots.”

Ethel lays back down and gives Betty a crooked smile. “Thanks Betty.”

*

She wakes up covered in sweat, hot all over and shivery with fear. Betty chokes on air and curls over to face the wall, vaguely noticing that it’s still dark out. She pulls her knees up to her chest and tries to focus on her breathing, letting the panic rush through her and drag her under. 

Edgar had told her once, _you are not your feelings_ , and Betty said that was the dumbest thing she’d ever heard, and he said, _let’s try again later_ , like she was a stupid child who wasn’t able to grasp his lofty concepts.

Betty swallows back a bitter taste in her mouth as her thoughts bounce around, circling back to Polly, the night Betty left, Polly out there without Betty, with no one to protect her. Tears slide down her face and she presses her cheek against the pillow, one hand against her mouth. She misses her sister so much it feels like a physical separation inside her body, her heart cleaving in two.

 _I’m sorry, Pol,_ Betty thinks. _I’m so sorry_.

She squeezes her eyes shut but it doesn’t make the mental image of her sister go away, her pale skin, her soft smile. Polly in her white dress, skin and bones, looking up at Edgar like he was her salvation, stars in her eyes, and why would she ever listen to Betty when she had a living god standing in front of her, promising her a whole other world, a life without pain, without sorrow, without fear?

Betty never stood a chance.

She’s still awake when the nurse comes in to get her and Ethel in the morning. There’s another undignified bathroom break, then the nurse’s station for her pills before they’re taken down for breakfast. The only reason Betty is able to get down a bowl of cereal is knowing that she’s leaving, an uncomfortable sense of claustrophobia following her around, eyes watching her eat and go up to the day room with the rest of the patients when she’s finished.

Betty has to wait for two full hours until a nurse retrieves her to be discharged. Ethel comes over and gives her a hug goodbye and Betty finds herself fiercely clinging to her, overwhelmed with gratitude for this sweet girl who was kind to Betty no reason other than she chose to be.

“If anyone fucks with you,” Betty whispers, “tell them your friend Betty will come here and mess them up, okay?”

Ethel giggles as she pulls away. “Okay.”

Betty is taken to the nurse’s station and has to sign a bunch of paperwork, is given a stack of prescriptions signed by Dr. Burble and a bag that contains her dress, Polly’s shoes, and her driver’s license. The nurse who walked her around yesterday morning takes Betty through the locked door and into an elevator and that’s when it really hits her, that she’s leaving. She’s back in the cloud of medication and exhausted too but she can feel her adrenaline spike a little, at the realization that she’s almost free.

They get off on the first floor and the nurse walks Betty through the lobby and out the front doors. There’s a black town car parked on the street with a man in a suit standing next to it and she doesn’t see Archie anywhere.

“This is you. Good luck honey, take care of yourself.” The nurse gives Betty a quick, fierce hug and goes back inside the hospital, leaving Betty alone, standing on the sidewalk in her hospital sweats and socks in front of the mystery car.

The man opens the door to the backseat and a young woman gets out of the car. Betty’s first thought is that she’s beautiful - she has shiny dark hair and glowing skin and she’s wearing a glamorous black cape with a designer handbag slung over one arm, her berry painted lips curving up in a perfect smile as she walks towards Betty.

Betty’s second thought is that it’s a trap.

What if Edgar knows where she is? What if someone followed her here, what if someone found out about Archie, what if someone at the hospital is secretly affiliated with The Farm? What if this woman is an imposter, meant to trick Betty into getting into a car that’s going to take her straight back to Edgar?

The grey sky spins above her as she watches the woman get closer, thinking _run_ , but she can’t get her feet to move. 

“Betty?” The woman is still smiling at her. “I’m Veronica.”

Betty’s frozen, she has no idea what to do and for one exceptionally low moment she misses The Farm, the way she never had to make a choice because everything was chosen for her, except to make the choice to rebel. But here, with this beautiful stranger in front of her and the man by the car and miles of woods around her and nowhere to run, there’s no one to tell her what to do and Betty feels paralyzed by indecision.

Veronica responds to Betty’s obvious impending panic attack by rolling her eyes and taking out her phone. 

“Hang on,” she instructs, her fingers tapping at the screen, and holds the phone up to her ear. “Reggie, it’s V, put Archie on please… I don’t give a shit Reggie… Reggie Mantle, I will take you off the schedule at Bees for all of next week if you don’t put Archie on in five, four, three - oh hello, lover. Would you _please_ tell Betty that I’m me and not some evil woman trying to kidnap her?”

She holds the phone out to Betty and clicks her tongue impatiently, and Betty meekly takes the phone like she’s been chastised and presses it to her ear. “Hello?”

“Betty?” It’s Archie, and Betty is so relieved her eyes fill with tears.

“Hey, Arch.”

“Are you okay?”

“I thought you were picking me up,” she sniffs, uncomfortably aware that Veronica’s listening to her.

“Yeah, sorry, I took the last two days off work so I had to come in today. Veronica’s driver is gonna take you guys back to the city, I’ll see you at our place tonight, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Can you put Veronica on, please?”

“Sure.”

She holds the phone out and Veronica takes it back, listens to something Archie says before nodding and smacking her lips into the speaker before hanging up. “C’mon Betty, if we leave now we might back it back to the city before rush hour.”

Veronica reaches out her hand and Betty has no choice but to take it. Veronica slides into the backseat and Betty climbs in after her, dropping her bag on the floor of the car before putting on her seatbelt. The man gets into the front seat and starts the car and Betty reaches out to grip the door, heart pounding in her chest.

There’s no going back now.

“Betty, this is my driver, Andre.” Veronica leans back in her seat, looking down at her phone. “We’ve got about four hours to kill, maybe more if we get stuck in traffic. I've got podcasts, I’ve got Spotify, what do you feel like?”

Betty blinks heavily at her. “I’m really tired, would you mind if I took a nap?”

“Of course not,” Veronica says graciously, and pulls a pair of headphones out of her purse.

Betty tilts her head back and closes her eyes. She doesn’t feel relaxed enough to be able to fall all the way asleep but she’s able to drift in and out, half-watching the trees fly by as they drive down the highway. Veronica seems occupied on her phone so Betty closes her eyes again and at some point she manages to fall asleep for real. When she wakes up they’re getting off a highway exit and Betty’s chest tightens as she thinks about being back in Manhattan, in the city where she was going to live and work and build a new life for herself, before she went on a crazy rescue mission that cost her almost two years of her life.

They stop at a pharmacy and Veronica sends Andre in with the prescriptions while Veronica and Betty wait in the car. Betty stares out the window, watching people rush by on the sidewalk, too tired to wonder at how easy this all is, too easy, like it’s just a trap. It’s been so long since she’s been out like this, she can barely remember what it feels like, to be another person out on the street, to move through the world with freedom.

Andre comes back and gets into the car, turns around and wordlessly passes a white paper bag to Betty. She examines it, her name is printed right on the sheet stapled to the bag next to an address on the Upper West Side. Betty traces her fingers over it, wondering when she’ll ever have control of her life again. It’s not that she isn’t grateful, it’s more like she feels like a child being passed around, especially the way this Andre guy seems to just take care of things, who makes their driver pick up their prescriptions, anyway?

And then Betty thinks about standing in line in a drugstore, on security cameras, where anyone could see her, and feels unbelievably relieved that Veronica had Andre do it.

Andre starts the car and pulls them back into traffic. Betty‘s mental map of the city starts coming back as he drives them to the Upper West side and pulls the car up in front of a building with a sign over the awning that says _The Pembrooke._

“This is us!” Veronica announces brightly.

Andre walks around and opens the door to the backseat. Betty slides out of the car and squints in the afternoon sunshine, clutching the plastic bag in one hand and her prescriptions in the other as she waits for Veronica to get out of the car, which she does with an absurd amount of grace, legs neatly unfolding as she steps onto the sidewalk, and Betty follows her up to the frosted glass doors of the building.

The door swings open and an older man dressed in a forest green uniform with gold trim holds it open for them. “Welcome back, Miss Lodge.”

Veronica slings her arm over Betty’s shoulders. “Smithers, this is Betty Cooper, Archie’s oldest and bestest friend. She’s going to be our guest for a while.”

“Lovely to meet you, Miss Cooper,” he says warmly. “You need anything, anything at all, you just let me know.”

“Thank you,” Betty murmurs.

She follows Veronica inside and across a tastefully decorated lobby over to the elevator. The golden doors slide open and Betty shuffles in after Veronica, who pushes the button for the sixth floor. Betty clutches the railing as they soar up, anxiously watching the numbers tick up until they reach the sixth floor and get out. Betty follows Veronica down a hallway lined with plush burgundy carpet until they get to the last door at the end of the hall, trying to reconcile living in a luxury apartment building after The Farm.

“This is us.” Veronica gets a key ring out of her bag, unlocks the door and swings it open.

Betty follows Veronica into her and Archie’s apartment and curiously looks around. They’re in a small foyer with cream painted walls and an entryway table with a glass vase full of lilies and a framed photo of Archie and Veronica wearing college graduation robes. It opens up into a living room, there’s a large flatscreen tv on the far wall flanked by two towering shelving units across from a large couch and two armchairs. The decor is dark wood mixed with cream and gold upholstery, absurdly grown up looking decor for a twenty-two year old.

“Do you want a tour?” Veronica asks.

“Okay.” Betty follows Veronica down the hallway that runs along the right side of the room, passes a small laundry nook, and walks until Veronica stops in front of a door as the hallway forks left.

“So this is your room.” Veronica opens the door and Betty follows her inside.

The room is as beautifully decorated as the living room: a queen sized bed with a pale blue satin duvet is pushed against the wall opposite the door, there’s a corner window that faces the street and there’s a door over to her left that leads to a bathroom. Veronica crosses the room and picks up a sleek white box that’s sitting on one of the two nightstands that frame the bed.

“Here,” Veronica says. “It’s already all set up, and mine and Archie’s numbers are in it.”

Betty stares at the box, it’s for a model of an iPhone she didn’t even know existed. “You got me a phone?”

“Well, you have to have a phone.” Veronica says, like it’s obvious. “The boxes next to the desk are what we saved from your apartment, everything’s labeled, but you’re probably going to need to replenish your wardrobe.”

Betty wanders over and crouches down at the desk that’s against the wall opposite the bed. There’s a stack of neatly labeled boxes on the floor: _Betty - books, Betty - clothes, Betty - school, Betty - misc._

“Archie saved my clothes?” Betty asked.

“Yeah - well, I did, actually, I thought it would be kind of weird for your guy friend to go through your underwear, you know?” 

Betty stares at her, trying to imagine this girl in her and Archie’s old apartment, going through her drawers, combing through Betty’s underwear. “Thanks.”

“Sure. Bathroom’s right there, I put some essentials in there but I’m totally down for making a Sephora run this week if you need to. Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the apartment.” Veronica walks out of the room and turns right, and Betty follows her down a long hallway.

“That’s the master.” Veronica points to a door on her right.

The hallway turns left past a linen closet and Betty follows Veronica into an absolutely gorgeous kitchen. Everything is gleamingly white except for a marble black island in the middle of the room with black leather stools clustered around it. Betty wanders over to the right, where the wall is made of floor to ceiling windows that face the park.

“Wow,” she breathes. “This is amazing.”

“Mom owns the building,” Veronica says casually. “It’s honestly a shame that Archie and I don’t take advantage of the kitchen as much as we should, it’s just, between the bar and the center we’re out late a lot, and take-out is easier.”

“The center?”

“It’s where Archie is right now. He started it with a friend, it’s kind of like a mix between a boxing club and an after school center for at-risk youth.”

“Wow. When I left Archie wanted to be a rock star.”

“He plays at the bar,” Veronica says. “He and Josie sing together sometimes. Oh my god, she is so excited to see you, seriously Betty, everyone’s been freaking out. Oh hey, are you hungry? Archie will be home soon, I could order something.”

“Okay.” Betty curls her shoulders forward, feeling awkward and out of place.

Do you like pizza? Everyone likes pizza right? Well, I guess unless you’re lactose intolerant or gluten free” -

“Pizza‘s fine,” Betty says. “Is it okay if I take a shower?”

“Of course. There’s a clean towel in the bathroom. If you want to change I washed a few of your things and put them in the dresser for you.”

Betty tried to imagine Veronica doing laundry but she can’t really see it. “Okay. Thanks.”

Veronica smiles easily, maybe she’s the kind of person who loves playing hostess. “No problem.”

Betty wanders back down the hallway until she reaches the guest room she’s been given. She goes in and closes the door, and presses the button in the center of the knob to lock it. It makes her heart race, the simple act of locking a door, and she lets out a shaky breath before padding across the bedroom to the bathroom and turning on the light.

There’s a clean towel neatly folded on a rack, bottles of shower gel and shampoo on a ledge in the shower. Betty takes off the hospital clothes and shoves them into the wicker hamper, and opens the cabinet above the sink, wincing at the sliver of the reflection she catches of herself in the mirror. No wonder the nurses were obsessed with what she ate, she looks like, well… she looks exactly like someone would look after living on The Farm as long as she did.

There’s a tube of toothpaste in the cabinet along with a new toothbrush, sunscreen, moisturizer, hairspray, and makeup remover. Betty closes the cabinet gently, Veronica’s guest bathroom is nicer than some hotels Betty has stayed at. Her standards have been brought so low that the idea of living in this kind of luxury is hard to wrap her head around. 

She gets into the shower and turns the water on, and sticks her head under the spray when it gets hot. The fan turned on when she turned on the light, and between that and the fall of the water she’s sure it’s loud enough to cover up the sound of herself crying into her hand, because Polly’s gone and Betty is stuck here like a sitting duck. If Edgar or some of The Farmies look for her Archie is the first person they’d try to find, he’s the strongest tie Betty has to her old life, which puts him in the most danger.

After a few minutes she calms down enough to use the new bottle of lavender scented shower gel, relishing the feeling of getting to take a real shower, actually feeling clean instead of rushing through a cold shower with a bar of soap. She washes her hair and uses the brand new razor Veronica left for her on the edge of the sink to shave under her arms and her legs. When she’s finished Betty holds it with one hand and looks down at the metal blade. It’s been so long since she’s had access to anything sharp and she resists the urge to run her thumb along the blade, wondering how hard she’d have to press to cut the skin open.

The thought makes her put the razor down like it’s burned her. She can’t think about things like that, she has to focus. She can’t help Polly if she’s bleeding out in the apartment of some real estate heiress.

Betty turns the water off and gets out, wraps herself in the plush white towel from the rack and dares to look at her face in the mirror for the first time. Her wet hair falls past her shoulders in knotted clumps, her skin is milky pale, there are bruised looking circles under her eyes and her cheeks are sunken in. Betty traces her fingers over her bones, wondering how much weight she lost while she was gone. 

It’s strange to see that she looks as fragile as she feels. At The Farm it didn’t matter what she looked like, her body was considered merely a vehicle for ascension. But standing in the bathroom she remembers what it felt like growing up, all those hours spent in front of the mirror, trying to make herself look beautiful and at the time it seemed really important but now she can’t remember why.

Betty opens a drawer under the sink and finds a pack of washcloths, a hairbrush, a pack of hair ties, and a manicure kit; Veronica really thought of everything. She works the brush through her hair until she gets all the knots out and ties it back in a low ponytail, and goes into the bedroom to look at the clothes Veronica left for her. The dresser is next to the window, there’s a vase of fresh flowers and a scented candle set on top, and Betty wonders if Veronica did all this herself or if she had help.

She finds a few pairs of folded underwear and a bra, a pair of black athletic shorts, jeans that will probably be too big for her right now, a few tee shirts, her favorite pink sweater, and her blue Riverdale Vixens team hoodie. Betty’s starting to shiver in her towel, she quickly puts on a pair of black briefs and a bra and yanks a thin tee shirt over her head. She steps into the athletic shorts and has to fold the waistband over twice so they don’t fall down. She’s still cold so she takes out her sweatshirt, tracing her fingers over the yellow letters before tugging it on.

She walks over to the door and presses her ear against it but she doesn’t hear anything. She unlocks it and steps into the hall. She hovers, unsure if she should walk straight and go to the living room or turn right and go to the kitchen. She realizes this is the first real choice she’s had to make in a while and it makes a hysterical giggle bubble up in her chest, that she’s actually afraid of going the wrong way, of getting in trouble for not asking permission before roaming the apartment by herself.

 _Trust goes both ways, Betty_ , Edgar had told her. _If you want to be free you must show me I can trust you._

“You aren’t there,” Betty whispers to herself. “You don’t have to follow their rules.”

But as hard as she tries to make herself believe it, she can’t bring herself to take a single step.


	4. A New Day

Betty is still frozen in the hallway, staring blankly at a framed photo on the opposite wall of Veronica posing with two dark haired people who must be her parents, when she hears a door slam and startles so hard she bangs her elbow against the wall.

“Hey!” Archie calls out. “I’m back!”

Betty hurries down the hallway to the living room, where Archie is standing there holding a pizza box with one hand. “Hey, you’re back!” he greets her. “Feel good to wear your own clothes again?”

“Yeah.” Betty reaches up and twists her fingers around her ponytail, feeling shy.

It’s hard to reconcile her version of Archie with the person who lives here. The Archie she knows is her friend from childhood, someone messy and sweet, a normal person from a small town, just like her. And then Betty left and while she was being brainwashed and psychologically tortured, Archie was growing up.

“Hey, there you are!” Veronica pops through a door on the far side of the living room Betty didn’t see before. “Oh hey, Betty. C’mon, plates are in the kitchen.”

Betty follows her and Archie into a formal dining room and through a swinging door that leads to the other entrance to the kitchen, because Archie and Veronica live in an apartment so big their kitchen has multiple doorways. She wanders over to the island where Veronica has set out plates and napkins and waits for Veronica to steer her to a stool to sit on.

Veronica and Archie sit down across from her and Archie pops open the lid of the pizza box. “How was the drive back?”

“Not too bad.” Veronica picks up a slice of pizza. “Oh my god, I am _starving_.”

Betty watches Veronica, a woman she is sure has never gone hungry a day in her life, bring the slice of pizza to her lips and tear a bite off the end with her teeth.

“Here, Betty.” Archie breaks off a slice and sets it down on her plate.

“Thanks,” she murmurs, wondering when she’s going to be able to look either of them in the eye without feeling awkward.

Betty picks up the slice of pizza, surprised at the way her stomach growls. “I don’t think I’ve had pizza since finals week.”

She says it in an offhand way, doesn’t mean much by it, but when she looks up Archie seems stricken. “That was like practically two years ago.”

“I know,” she mumbles, the back of her neck hot.

“What the hell were they feeding you, anyway?” he asks.

“Archie,” Veronica murmurs.

“What?” Archie looks annoyed. “You didn’t know her before, you don’t know what she looked like before those people” -

Betty slams her palm down on the island. “Can you not talk about me like I’m not sitting right in front of you?”

Archie rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. “You’re going to eat that, right?”

She doesn’t know why she feels like fighting Archie, except that it would feel good to fight someone who wouldn’t fight her back. “I don’t need you to micromanage me.”

“Okay, why don’t both of you take a breath,” Veronica suggests calmly. “Archie, we all know how much you care about Betty, but she’s an adult who certainly knows how to feed herself. She’s had a long day, give her a break.”

Betty looks at Veronica in amazement, all of her initial doubt washed away in the face of Veronica’s unexpected loyalty.

Archie slouches and gives Betty the puppy dog eyes. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She takes a tiny bite of her pizza and almost groans out loud. “This is really good.”

Archie and Veronica both give her proud smiles like she’s a baby trying a new food for the first time. Veronica asks Archie a question about work and after a minute Betty zones out, savoring the pizza, trying to believe that if she sticks with it this kind of life can be hers too.

*

Betty can’t sleep that night. She rolls around in bed for a while but she can’t get comfortable, everything is too plush, too nice, luxury she doesn’t know what to do with. She reminds herself of a story their dad used to tell them at bedtime, The Princess and the Pea, but what’s getting between Betty and a good night’s sleep is a lot more than a stray vegetable trapped under the mattress.

Eventually she gathers up the bedding and makes a nest on the floor under the window. She slips the pillow behind her back and leans against the wall, wrapping herself in the duvet cover. She closes her eyes and tries to imagine Polly, wondering what she’s doing. The Farm has other properties, they moved around three times when Betty was there due to what Edgar claimed were security risks, most likely they’ve sequestered themselves somewhere Edgar has decided is safe until Agent Smith and the FBI are off their trail.

It’s been three days since Betty left, they could be anywhere by now. She wonders what happened to Agent Smith, imagines him tromping through the Canadian wilderness searching for Polly, although realistically he’s probably back in DC, resuming his life and not pouring all his energy into looking for people who don’t want to be found.

The digital clock on one of the nightstands tells Betty it’s midnight and she drags herself out of her bundle of bedding to stand up. She didn’t do her evening rituals in the hospital, she was too drugged up to remember but now, knowing her sister is out there doing them too, Betty stands with her feet together and brings her hands in front of herself in prayer position.

“Thank you for the blessing of this new day,” she whispers, and holds her hands up to the sky. “I release yesterday to the waters of the past and ask that it be washed away.”

She slowly lowers her hands palm down until they’re at her sides. “I welcome the new day that is dawning. When I wake the sun in the sky will remind me that the light I see is the same as the light within.”

She sinks to her knees and bows until her forehead touches the floor, only half aware that she’s crying. “May I sleep tonight with the knowledge that I will rise in the morning lighter, ready to fulfill my mission on Earth until I am asked to ascend.”

She’s sobbing by the time she’s finished, tears falling onto the soft white rug that looks brand new. She grabs a tissue from the box on the nightstand next to her new phone, walks back to the corner under the window and sits down, wrapping the blanket around herself as she rubs at her eyes. The rituals were done as a group at The Farm, Betty used to struggle to not laugh out loud as she faked her way through them but at some point her feelings shifted, she started to feel something when she did them, moving along with the other Farmies as Edgar led them along, something that felt like peace, some sort of quiet contentment. 

It’s not like she became a believer, she never really meant the words but that wasn’t the point. It felt good to be with her sister, good to mark the day as another one she’d survived. Now the ritual feels like the only way to hold onto Polly, Betty doesn’t know where her sister is now but she knows that Polly performs the ritual faithfully. Betty doesn’t believe in it but she believes in Polly, and if performing a stupid ritual makes Betty feel closer to her sister, well, there’s no one here to judge her for it.

Betty reaches up and carefully slides the corner of the curtain over just a little, enough for her to peek out the window. It’s dark outside but she’s back in the city that never sleeps so it’s not dark in the way she’s used to, there’s no velvety black sky dotted with stars the way there was on The Farm. She can see streetlights and cars moving down below, people walking by, the glowing sign for the Rite Aid down the block. She squints but she doesn’t see any cars parked outside, no ominous unmarked vans or creepy looking men standing on the sidewalk waiting to drag her back to Edgar.

She lets the curtain fall back so the window is covered again and rubs her eyes. The white bag from the pharmacy is sitting on the desk and after a moment Betty goes over to it and opens the bag, carrying it to the bathroom as she rifles through the prescriptions. There are two bottles made out to Elizabeth Cooper, she’s pretty sure one is an antidepressant and the other must be for anxiety, given the instructions _take as needed for anxiety_.

Edgar didn’t believe in prescription medication, Betty’s birth control and Adderall were confiscated the day she arrived. She realizes she probably should’ve mentioned that to Doctor Burble and figures she’ll ask for new prescriptions when she sees her, whenever that is.

She puts the bottles in the cabinet above the sink and then after a moment she uncaps the bottle of the pills to treat anxiety and shakes one into her palm. She pops it into her mouth and swallows it dry, before she can talk herself out of it. She isn’t at The Farm anymore, she reminds herself. She doesn’t have to follow the rules. And it’s not like Edgar will know, anyway.

She puts the bottle back in the cabinet and goes back to her new room. It’s strange to think of it as hers, she’d gotten used to the way no one owned anything at The Farm, the very concept of ownership considered to be unevolved, selfish. She pads back over to the blanket pile and curls up in the middle of it, flipping the duvet up over her legs. She grabs the pillow and slips it under her head, and watches the shadows move against the white walls.

After a while she starts feeling very heavy, like she’s sinking into the floor, and she snuggles into the blanket as her eyes drift shut.

*

Betty wakes up on the floor to sunlight glowing around the edges of the curtains. She cracks her neck and pulls herself up to sit against the wall, her back hurts from sleeping on the floor and her mouth is dry. She drags herself up and carries all the bedding back to the bed, makes it up so it looks like she slept in it and smooths the edges out.

She goes to the bathroom and uses the toilet, washes her hands and considers the medication in the cabinet. She doesn’t know what to do, back to the paralyzing indecision she felt yesterday, and she stands blankly in front of the sink for a minute before shutting the cabinet without taking any pills. She washes her face instead and brushes her teeth, brushes her hair and ties it back up in a ponytail.

She doesn’t know what else to wear so she stays in her too-big shorts and Vixens sweatshirt. She goes into the bedroom and realizes she doesn’t know what to do next, the idea of going out into the apartment and searching for Archie and Veronica seems overwhelming. Betty doesn’t know what their morning routine is like and she doesn’t want to be in the way, she’s suddenly afraid of upsetting them by being around, putting them out even more than she already is.

She sits on the edge of the bed, frozen with anxiety until someone finally knocks on the door and Archie calls out, “Betty? You up?”

“Hey.” She rushes over to the door and opens it, Archie’s standing there in jeans and a hoodie, his hair sticking up.

“Hey, morning. How’d you sleep?” he asks her.

“Okay,” she lies.

“Come on, breakfast is in the kitchen.” Archie pats her shoulder and Betty manages to give him a weak smile and follows him down the hall to the kitchen.

“Morning!” Veronica calls out cheerfully from where she’s eating a slice of toast at the island and reading the paper. “There’s coffee if you want it, Betty, can I make you something?”

Betty shrinks at the direct attention, hiding halfway behind Archie, but Veronica gets up and circles around the island, hands pointing towards the kitchen counters, the fridge, the door of the pantry. “We’ve got toast, oatmeal, eggs, cereal, anything sound good?”

“Cereal’s fine,” Betty mumbles.

“Go sit, I’ll make you a bowl.” Archie points her towards the island and Betty walks over to hop up onto a stool, relieved at being given a direct instruction.

Veronica comes back to sit next to her and resumes eating her toast, an empty coffee mug next to her. “Did you sleep okay?”

“Yeah,” Betty lies.

“You sure?” Veronica tilts her head, frowning. “You look tired.”

“Ronnie, give her a break, she’s still adjusting.” Archie carries two mugs of coffee to the island and sets one down in front of Betty.

“Of course,” Veronica murmurs, and goes back to her paper.

“Thanks, Archie.” Betty wraps her hands around the mug, brings it to her mouth and blows a little. 

She hasn’t had coffee in years, she used to be a caffeine addict back in college but it’s been awhile since she’s had the simple pleasure of a mug of coffee over the paper and for a moment she’s insanely jealous of Veronica, right down to the silver bracelet she’s wearing on one tanned wrist. The only jewelry Betty was allowed to wear were the little rose gold studs in her earlobes and that’s because they were barely visible. Edgar hated flashy jewelry, he said it represented the worst of petty human vanity and over -identification with meaningless objects.

The coffee tastes even better than she remembers it, Archie put a little creamer in it and it’s the perfect balance of bitter and sweet. Betty sighs and takes another sip, and next to her Veronica laughs, but in a nice way, like she understands.

“Good?” she asks Betty, and Betty smiles and ducks her head.

“It’s been awhile,” she explains.

“You poor thing.” Veronica squeezes her shoulder. “Withholding caffeine should be considered a human rights abuse.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Betty says automatically, and then sits there feeling like an idiot, wondering why she would ever defend anything that happened on The Farm.

“Well, we definitely have to do something about your wardrobe.” Veronica brushes a few crumbs off her plum colored sweater. “You can’t wear that old hoodie forever.”

Betty curls her fingers around the sleeves of her sweatshirt like she’s afraid the other girl is about to tear it off her body. She has to remind herself that Veronica doesn’t know her, she doesn’t know the significance of the hoodie, how hard Betty worked to earn it.

“That’s Betty’s cheerleading sweatshirt from Riverdale High.” Archie plops a bowl of Cheerios topped with sliced strawberries and milk in front of her. “It has - what did you say about your prom dress when I asked if you still needed it in your closet?”

“Sentimental value.” Veronica slides off her stool and carries her plate over to the sink. “No offense Archie, but it’s not like you’re the fashion expert here.”

“None taken.” Archie smacks her ass on the way to get a bowl of cereal for himself and Betty looks down, feeling like a voyeur.

“Regardless.” Veronica rinses her plate and puts it in the dishwasher, which makes Betty genuinely impressed. She had the impression Veronica didn’t do housework. “She’s going to need more than an old sweatshirt. I’m totes up for shopping later, you interested Betty?”

The idea of walking around a store, hell, the idea of leaving the apartment at all, makes Betty so nauseous she almost pukes into her cereal. She hasn’t even gotten used to being here yet, there’s no way she can handle walking around a store with a girl she hardly knows, even if Veronica has been lovely so far, and be able to do something as stupid as buy clothes without having a total meltdown, not when Polly is out there somewhere and Edgar is probably scouring the state for Betty.

“I forgot to take my meds, I’ll be right back,” Betty mutters.

She hops down from the stool and rushes out of the kitchen without explaining herself further, back down the long hallway and escapes to her room. She inhales sharply as she hurries to the bathroom and gets out both pill bottles, takes one of each and swallows with water from the tap. She kicks the lid of the toilet seat down and drops onto it, buries her face into her hands and shoves her palm into her mouth so no one can hear her scream.

When she pulls her hand away there’s a line of indentations across it but it’s just teeth marks, she didn’t break the skin. Betty rubs over them with her thumb and forces herself to stand up; she checks her face in the mirror and her cheeks are flushed but other than that she looks okay.

She’s almost across the bedroom when the door swings open from the outside, revealing Archie, worry all over his face. “You okay?”

She tries to say _I’m fine_ but the words get stuck in her throat and her eyes fill with tears. Archie’s expression softens as he reaches for her hands, sweeping his thumbs up and down her palms because he’s Archie and he’s always known her coping mechanisms.

“I’m sorry,” she bites out. “I can’t, I can’t do it, please don’t make me.”

“Do what?”

“Shopping,” Betty sniffs, tilting her head back so the tears don’t escape.

His face falls. “I thought you and Veronica were getting along okay.”

“It’s not that, I, I can’t go out right now and be around strangers, I can’t, I’m sorry, please don’t make me” -

“Hey, Betty, it’s okay.” Archie lets go of her hands so he can put his arms around her. “That’s fine. I know you’ve been through a lot, I bet it’s totally normal to feel that way. Don’t worry, Veronica will understand.”

“Okay.” Betty closes her eyes and tries to let go, sinking into the hug, held in the arms of someone who would never hurt her.

“C’mon,” Archie says gently. “Your cereal’s gonna get soggy.”

Betty follows Archie back to the kitchen, where Veronica’s leaning against the counter sipping a fresh mug of coffee and scrolling through her phone. To Betty’s relief she doesn’t say anything so Betty hops back up on her stool and drags her spoon through her cereal. Archie crosses the kitchen and murmurs something to Veronica, who flicks her eyes at Betty and then looks away, nodding at whatever Archie’s saying.

A loud buzzing sound makes Betty drop her spoon into her bowl but Archie walks over to her with a reassuring smile on his face. “It’s just downstairs.”

Veronica walks over to a box on the wall Betty hadn’t noticed and holds down a button. “Yes?”

A voice crackles through the speaker. “Ms. Lodge, there’s a guest downstairs for Ms. Cooper. Special Agent Charles Smith?”

Veronica raises an eyebrow at Archie, who glances sideways at Betty before nodding at Veronica, who holds the button down again. “Thank you Smithers, you can send him up.”

Veronica walks out of the kitchen as Betty gives up on her cereal, fingers clenching together in her lap. The medication definitely hasn’t kicked in yet because her face feels hot and her hands go numb in her lap as her head spins, wondering if Agent Smith found Polly or if she’s gone forever and then Betty thinks, what if Edgar punished Polly because of Betty, what if he decided Polly wasn’t light enough, pure enough, what if Betty’s darkness tarnished Polly’s light, what if Edgar decides Polly isn’t light enough to ascend, what if what if what if -

She doesn’t realize she’s hyperventilating until Archie grabs her hands and squeezes them, hard. “Hey, Betty. Just breathe, okay?”

She looks at Archie and her tears spill over. “What if she’s dead?”

“You can’t think like that,” Archie says, thumbs sweeping across her cheeks to wipe away her tears.

“I can’t do this,” she sobs. “I can’t do this Archie, I can’t” -

Archie wraps his arms around her and pulls her to his chest. “Yes, you can,” he says fiercely. “You’re the strongest person I know. You survived almost two years with those people. You’re a fucking badass, Betty Cooper. You got this, okay?”

Edgar would tell her that her fear was an illusion, her ego telling her a scary story Betty was too weak to resist. Her father would tell her that her fear was her motivator, the dark compass inside of her. Her mother would tell her that her fear was narcissism, a character flaw, thinking everything was about her.

But all Betty is aware of right now is that everything feels really, really bad and she’s too tired to want to analyze her feelings.

“I’m so scared, Archie,” she whimpers, crying into his sweatshirt, because it feels so good to be allowed to feel again, to not be chastised for displaying vulnerability.

“I know.” Archie rubs her back. “We’ve all gotta you, okay? You’re safe now. I know you’re scared about Polly but you’re going to be okay Betty, I promise.”

Betty nods into his shirt and pulls away so she can wipe her eyes as Veronica comes back in through the dining room, Special Agent Smith trailing behind her. “Can I get you anything?” Veronica asks him. “Water? Juice? Coffee?”

“Coffee would be great,” he says appreciatively, and Veronica smiles and walks across the kitchen to fill up a mug for him.

“Betty, nice to see you again.” Agent Smith walks over to the island and sits down across from Betty. “How are you doing?”

Betty shrugs, leaning into Archie. “Did you find Polly yet?”

“No,” Agent Smith says gently. “I understand how upsetting this must be for you but I promise that we’re doing everything we can to find her and the rest of the The Farmies. We’re checking out all known locations of places they’ve stayed before, we’re coordinating with the proper authorities, we’re doing everything we can.”

Veronica sets a mug down in front of Agent Smith and reaches across the island to brush her fingers across the back of Archie’s hand. “I’m going to go call Katy, maybe she can bring some stuff for Betty after she’s finished at Lacy’s today.”

Archie nods and Veronica slips out of the kitchen, leaving Betty sitting at the island with Agent Smith and Archie.

Agent Smith takes a sip of his coffee and sets a notebook down on the island. “I appreciate how difficult things have been for you Betty, you’ve gotten closer to The Farm than anyone I’ve ever met. You have invaluable insight into the way they operate.”

“You want to interview me,” Betty concludes.

“Anything you tell me could help lead us to Polly.”

Betty bites the inside of her cheek. “Okay.”

Agent Smith nods and flips the notebook open, reaches into his coat and takes out a silver plan. “Thank you, I understand this must be difficult but I can assure you Betty, you can trust me. I’m here to help you and your sister.”

Archie checks the time on his phone. “I need to head to The Center.”

“Go, I’ll be okay,” Betty tells him.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

Archie twists his mouth to the side. “Maybe I should call in and stay home.”

“No, don’t, you’ve already missed work because of me,” she says guiltily. “C’mon Archie, it’s okay, you have a life too.”

“Are you _sure?”_ Archie’s hand cups over her shoulder. “I can stay here with you.”

“No, please go, I feel bad enough already,” she pleads.

“Okay.” Archie kisses the side of her head and sets his bowl of cereal in the sink before walking out of the kitchen.

“Okay, Betty.” Agent Smith locks eyes with her and clicks open his pen. “Let’s get started.”


	5. Scar Tissue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear Jughead is coming soon, please bear with me.

Agent Smith sits across the island from Betty in Veronica Lodge’s beautiful kitchen, silver pen in hand, ready to take notes. “I’d like to start at the beginning if that’s alright.”

Betty clutches her spoon. She's already regretting telling Archie to leave, the idea of pouring out her heart to this man and showing him all her scars is terrifying but the only thing more scary would be telling Archie. “The beginning of what?”

“When Polly joined the Farm.”

“Agent Smith…” She swirls her spoon through her cereal. “You said you’ve been investigating The Farm for a few years, right?”

“That’s right.”

“So you… know about my family, right? If you were already looking for me before?”

“I have done background research on your family,” he confirms. “After you went missing all your friends were interviewed. When the original detective working your case started looking into Polly they discovered the link between you and The Farm, that’s when we took over.”

“Then you know about my dad?” she asks quietly.

“Yes Betty. I know about your father.”

She gives up on the cereal for good and pushes the bowl away. “Okay.”

“Do you think they’re connected somehow?” he asks. “What your father did and why Polly chose to join The Farm?”

“Polly already had… emotional problems, before then.”

Agent Smith nods and flips back through his notebook. “She was a patient at Shady Grove during part of her senior year of high school, yes?”

“Yeah. That was before my dad…”

“And after he went to prison?”

“Polly didn’t handle it well.” Betty curls her fingers into her palms. “None of us handled it well.”

“She was vulnerable, he says. “Cults prey on that.”

“I know,” Betty says softly. “I’m not sure how she heard about them - they advertise sometimes, say they’re a non-denominational spiritual organization, bullshit like that.”

He gives her a careful look. “Why do you say that?”

“Say what?”

“That it’s bullshit.”

She wrinkled her forehead, is he joking? “Because they’re a cult, not a religious group. They don’t worship a god, they don’t help the community, it’s all just this big farce to bring people in the door. Most of them don’t stick but the ones that do, the people who are really lost and confused, people like my sister… they convince them that if they join The Farm, if they follow Edgar, adhere to all the rules….”

“What?” he asks. “What’s the hook, Betty?”

She presses the tips of her nails into her palms, just hard enough to feel the pressure. “Edgar gives them what they want the most. What they can’t get anywhere else.”

“Gives them what?”

_Imagine a world where you never have to be alone, Betty. Where you can always be with the people you love, even the ones who’ve crossed over. I can give you a family Betty, a real family, one that will see you as the shining light you truly are. But you have to trust me, Betty. You have to have faith. You can have anything you want but you must surrender your doubt. Surrender your control. Trust in me, follow my ways and I shall lead you to a better world._

“Love,” Betty says thickly. “Salvation. Belonging. He finds weak people, or addicts, runaways, people who’ve lost everything. And then he convinces them that if they join The Farm they’ll never be alone again. They’ll have a family. A purpose. Edgar knows how to talk to people. He’s charming. He gets inside their heads. And once he gets people isolated from the outside world… it’s amazing, really, how easily people can be broken down.”

“But not you,” he says. “He didn’t get you.”

“Sometimes,” she says in a small voice. “It feels like he did.”

“Did Edgar tell you to run away from The Farm?”

She blinks in surprise. “Of course not.”

“Then why did you?”

“Because Polly wouldn't. We were… things were bad. I didn’t know if we could survive a few more weeks.” Her throat tightens. “I don’t know if she _can_ survive a few more weeks. She… isn’t doing well.”

“You see?” Agent Smith gives her a serious look. “He couldn’t make you stay. You cared about helping your sister more than following their leader. It takes a strong person to be able to do that.”

“I don’t feel strong,” she admits.

“Do you know why you’re supposed to take rest days between workouts?” he asks.

She stares blankly at him, she has absolutely no idea what that has to do with anything.

“When you exercise it creates tiny tears in the muscle fibers,” he continues. “You literally break yourself down to build yourself up. You need those rest days to recover so your muscles can heal, and then they become bigger and stronger.”

“Okay…”

“You’re sore right now, Betty. You’ve survived the hardest workout of your life. You’re exhausted and you’re in pain and it feels like you’re broken. But you’re not. You’re in the beginning of the healing process. Don’t think that just because you’re hurting right now that you aren’t strong. I’ve met grown men who wouldn’t be able to handle this half as well as you are right now.”

“Thank you,” she murmurs, a little embarrassed at his praise.

“Do you want to stop for now?” he asks. “I know this is a lot.”

“I’m okay. I’ll tell you anything if you think it could help Polly.”

“Just a few more questions for today,” he says firmly. “You’ve been through a lot, we don’t need to push it.”

“Okay,” she concedes.

“Okay, I’ll cut right to the chase then. You were there for almost two years. Did you witness any crimes? The more we can hit them with the better.”

Betty swallows back something thick in her throat. “Beyond abuse and holding people against their will?”

He levels her with a look. “This wasn’t the first time you tried to escape, was it?”

Betty presses her lips together and tries not to cry. “No.”

“Okay,” he says steadily. “You’re doing great, Betty. Keep going.”

“I can’t prove it,” she starts. “I wasn’t there. But I… Polly told me.”

He leans forward. “Polly told you what?”

Betty digs her fingernails into her palms, the anxiety medication must be working because she isn’t crying but she feels a little dizzy. “You said you knew about my family.”

“That’s right.”

“My mother?”

“I know your mother joined The Farm after your sister did. You were a freshman at NYU then, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Betty. Tell me what Polly told you.”

Her bottom lip trembles. “It’s bad.”

“I’m sure it is,” he says, which is weirdly reassuring, like he knows she doesn’t want to scare him, which is ridiculous but true.

“He killed her,” Betty whispers. “Polly said Edgar killed our mother.”

“That’s a very serious accusation, Betty.”

She shoves her hands under her thighs so he can’t see how they’re shaking. “I know. That’s not… exactly the way she framed it but that’s what she meant.”

“How did she frame it? What did Polly actually say, if not those words?”

Betty grips the stool against a wave of sudden nausea. “She said our mom _ascended her physical body._ ”

“Were you under the assumption your mother was still alive before then?”

Her nails press into the leather stool. “I never saw her at The Farm. At first they told me she was off recruiting but when she didn’t come back and I kept asking why I couldn’t talk to her… Polly said if I knew what was best for me I’d never bring it up with anyone.”

He nods as he takes notes. “Is there a body? Witnesses? Recordings?”

“No, no, I don’t know. I said I can’t prove it.”

“Hey, hey, Betty, that’s okay. We’re just talking here. Did Polly tell you what happened?”

“They were doing some kind of ceremony” -

“Ceremony?”

“Yeah, we - they - sometimes he decides that a Farmie needs some kind of healing. To, um… anyway, Edgar picks who gets one and what method they use, and who helps him, the whole thing is considered an honor to be a part of. They were… he chose my mother. They did something with water and obviously something went wrong. It's just, the way she talked about it…”

Betty still remembers it, how she felt when Polly told her, horror on a level she thought didn’t exist, because she was the daughter of The Black Hood and she thought she’d seen the heart of human darkness, she thought she’d known evil, but after she met Edgar she realized her father was only a pale imitation of the kind of cruel insanity in other people. Her father was a killer, he did awful, unconscionable things, he liked to play games sometimes, but killing people the way he did… at least it was clean in a sense. Fast. It wasn’t a slow, prolonged deterioration disguised as enlightenment, it wasn’t hours and days locked in a small dark room, it wasn’t months of starvation. It wasn’t looking into the eyes of a man with the face of an angel and the soul of the devil every day and not cracking, holding her chin high, lying and lying and pretending to submit and subjecting herself to humiliation, degradation, and the worst part was she chose it. She put herself in the belly of the beast and got what was coming to her.

You can’t choose your parents. It isn’t her fault her father turned out to be a serial killer.

But she did choose Polly. Over Archie and the rest of her friends, over NYU, over her future.

Over herself.

“What?” Agent Smith prods. “What do you mean, Betty?”

“She… I’m not saying she was happy, it wasn’t like that. But she was… peaceful about it. Like she didn’t understand what it meant. They were doing some messed up ‘spiritual ceremony’ and my mom _died_ because they _killed_ her and Polly said it like it was a thing that had just happened, like an accident, whoops, someone held our mom down in a tub or something until she drowned and no one stopped, they kept going and Edgar didn’t even try to save her. They just covered it up. I think the only reason Polly told me not to tell is because she knew no one there really trusted me and she didn’t want them to be even more suspicious of me. She knew I would’ve asked everyone about it if she didn’t warn me.”

“Were you able to take anything with you that could provide proof? Papers, copies, notes, anything like that?”

She wasn’t, she didn’t have time to steal anything beyond her ID and Betty thinks about shivering in that little dress all night, tearing through the woods in the dark with nothing but her bare hands to defend herself. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, no, Betty, it’s alright. You did what you were supposed to do. You got yourself out of a dangerous situation, that was your only job. You survived, that’s all that matters. We’ll look into this, okay? If it’s true, she might not be the only one.”

“Agent Smith?”

“Yes?”

She takes a deep breath, she can't believe she’s about to ask this but it’s for Polly, anything for Polly. “What about physical evidence?”

“Are you referring to your back?”

Betty remembers that first morning in the hospital, changing in front of the nurse. In retrospect she’s a little surprised no one said anything to her about it at the hospital but they must have talked to him. “They told you at the hospital?”

He nods. “Clear signs of abuse.”

Her fingers twist in her lap. “That’s evidence, right? That he hurt me?”

“Would you be comfortable with me taking a few photos?” he asks.

Betty thinks about something her mother told her once before she started dating, that if a boy ever hurt her she should take pictures of the evidence because no one believes hysterical girls who accuse men of hurting them without proof.

“Okay,” she agrees cautiously. She looks over to her right, at the wall of windows letting in the sunlight, and hops off her stool. “Not here,” she explains.

Agent Smith follows her through the dining room and into the living room, where Veronica is sitting in the middle of the huge plush looking cream couch, an issue of Vanity Fair spread across her lap as she scrolls on her phone. “Hey,” she says, setting her phone down on the couch. “All done?”

“Almost. Do you have another bathroom? I mean, besides the one in the guest room?” Betty asks her.

“You’re the guest, it’s your room now, you don’t have to call it the guest room.”

Betty taps her fingers anxiously against her thighs, she has to do this before she loses her nerve. “Veronica? The bathroom?”

Veronica raises an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah, the powder room is across from the laundry unit, why?”

“I’m going to show Agent Smith something in the bathroom, we’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Um, absolutely not!” To Betty’s surprise Veronica leaps to her feet.

“It’s fine,” Betty tells her. “He just needs to take a few pictures of me.”

“Betty, I don’t care what kind of badge this guy has, there’s no way I’m letting him go with you into a bathroom alone!”

“Fine!” Betty snaps. “I’ll leave the door open then, feel free to join us!”

She stomps past the couch and walks down the hallway, Agent Smith and Veronica trailing behind her. When she gets to the laundry nook she notices a door to her right she didn’t see yesterday. Betty pushes it open to reveal a small bathroom with elegant black and white fleur-de-lis wallpaper and a huge gilt mirror hung in front of a sink.

Betty stands in the doorway, her back to Agent Smith, yanks her arms out of her sweatshirt and whips it off along with the tee shirt she has on underneath it before she can doubt herself.

“Oh my god!” Veronica yelps.

Betty crosses her arms over her chest, shivering in her flimsy beige bra. “Just let him take the photos, it’s fine.”

“Okay, Betty. I’m going to take pictures now.” He doesn’t touch her but she can feel Agent Smith come up behind her and then she hears the camera click a few times. “Okay, thank you Betty, you can get dressed now.”

She puts her tee shirt back on, grabs her sweatshirt and pulls it over her head. When she turns around Agent Smith has gone back to the hallway, eyes respectively not quite meeting hers as she walks past him and goes back to the living room, where Veronica is sitting on the couch with her head in her hands.

Agent Smith comes into the room and walks over to pick up his briefcase from where it’s resting on top of an ottoman. “Thank you so much for your time Betty, and Ms. Lodge, for the coffee.”

Veronica sniffs and gets up so she can shake his hand. “Feel free to drop by anytime.”

“I will,” he says, and Betty has a feeling he means it. “Betty, this is for you.” A business card has materialized between his fingers.

When she takes it she realizes it’s for Dr. Burble’s private practice, a business number and fancy office address right on Park Ave printed in crisp black type.

“Call her,” he advises. “I’ve worked with her before, you can trust her. Returning to real life again is going to be one hell of an adjustment.”

Betty nods and slips the card into the pocket of her sweatshirt. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now, I don’t want to scare you, but we have no idea if The Farm is looking for you. They’ve never lost an asset like this” -

“I’m not an asset,” Betty starts, but Agent Smith holds up his hand and her mouth snaps shut.

“The level of information that you possess makes you crucial in taking down The Farm,” he says. “You know their leader. You know how they think. You can identify their members. You have knowledge that could put Edgar Evernever behind bars for a long time. Now, I’m not telling you that you can’t go outside or try to enjoy your life now that you have it back, but it wouldn’t hurt to be cautious. Don’t go out alone, don’t advertise where you’re living, that kind of thing.”

“Of course,” Betty agrees, she’d be perfectly fine hiding out in this apartment until Polly is found and Edgar is locked up.

“Alright. I’ll be in touch, in the meantime try and not worry too much about Polly. Focus on you. The best way you can help your sister right now is to take care of yourself.”

Betty doesn’t know what to say to that so she nods and Veronica comes over to shake his hand. “Thank you, Agent.”

“Thank you for the hospitality, Ms. Lodge. I can see myself out, take care ladies.”

Betty and Veronica stand in the living room and watch him leave, shutting the door behind him. Veronica rushes over to turn the deadbolt before going back over to the couch to pick up her phone. She pushes a lock of hair away from her face and unlocks her phone with shaking fingers.

“I have to call Archie,” Veronica says tightly.

“What, why?”

“Betty,” Veronica says in a strained voice, and Betty realizes for the first time that the other girl’s eyes are full of tears. “I have to tell him what happened.”

“Please don’t,” Betty begs. “He feels bad enough already, please, I don’t want him to know.”

“I have to tell him,” Veronica argues. “Betty, you don’t know what he was like when you didn’t come back to school. He was a wreck. You were the only thing he could focus on, he barely managed to graduate on time. He _loves_ you.”

Betty swallows around the lump in her throat. “And you fell in love with him.”

Veronica reaches up and flicks a tear away. “Hard not to fall for someone who loves people like that.”

“Please,” Betty whispers, trying not to cry. “Please don’t tell him.”

“I’m sorry. He needs to know. He’d never forgive me for keeping that from him.”

“But” -

“It’s going to be okay,” Veronica says. “I’ll deal with Archie, alright?”

“Okay,” Betty mumbles, defeated.

“Hey, how about after I call him we binge the latest season of The Bachelorette, have a girls’ day in?”

Betty would honestly rather curl up on that big fancy bed in her new room and cry for a few hours but Veronica is clearly trying and maybe Betty’s a pushover or maybe The Farm beat the ability to say no out of her, but she doesn’t have it in her to argue.

“Okay,” she agrees. “Thanks. That would be really nice.”

Veronica gives her a half-smile. “Wonderful. I’m just going to give Archie a quick call, I’ll be right back.”

Veronica goes through the door that leads through the dining room to the kitchen, leaving Betty alone in the living room. She wanders over to the bookshelves framing the flatscreen tv, examining their contents. There’s a decent amount of books, although they’re mostly the kinds you’d read for school and not for fun unless you happen to be a bibliophile: Shakespeare, Vonnegut, Fitzgerald, Austen, Brontë, Dickens, Salinger, Hemingway, Steinbeck.

There are picture frames scattered among the shelves like little bookends, snapshots of Archie and Veronica’s life together. Betty examines each one closely, like a detective searching for clues, something to understand the life she’s landed in the middle of. There they are dressed in formalwear posed underneath a tree, sitting in a booth in a bar holding martinis with a few people Betty doesn’t know. Archie playing guitar onstage next to Josie singing into a mic, Veronica sitting on the edge of the stage looking back at Archie with an adoring expression on her face. Archie and Veronica standing on the sidewalk with Mary Andrews standing between them, her arms around their waists. Veronica wearing a tacky plastic tiara with a giant sparkly _21_ in the center of it standing in between Josie and a girl Betty doesn’t know, their cheeks pressed together. Archie and Veronica in swimsuits lying on pool chairs in the sunshine, wearing neon colored sunglasses and holding margaritas. 

Betty doesn’t even know what she’s feeling, examining these pictures. Something more complex than jealousy or envy, some kind of a mix of loss and self-hatred for wishing she’d been there, that it was her in those pictures. She never got to celebrate her twenty-first birthday at a bar or go on spring break, pose in college graduation robes with all her friends. 

_Stay on your mat, Betty._

Veronica comes back and Betty stumbles away from the bookshelves like she’s been caught stealing, but Veronica just gives her a placid smile and turns the tv on.

*

Betty spends the day on the couch with Veronica, binge watching The Bachelorette and nibbling at the snacks Veronica keeps bringing out for her like little offerings - Brie on crackers, apple slices with peanut butter, chocolate truffles. She doesn’t eat much, her appetite blunted by the pills she took earlier and the rock of guilt in her stomach. Betty doesn’t deserve to be here, eating organic food and watching mindless tv while her sister is out there suffering, if she’s still even alive. 

Veronica’s phone buzzes and she picks it up, swipes at the screen before tapping something out. “Hey, my friend Katy is stopping by with some stuff for you, she’s a personal shopper at Lacy’s.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s no big deal, I had her charge it to my parents’ account.”

“Veronica, I… I can’t pay you back for anything” -

“Betty, oh my god, that’s not what I meant. While you’re living with me and Archie consider everything courtesy of us. Seriously, Daddy owns a billion dollar company and between my trust and my various enterprises we’re doing quite well for ourselves, thank you very much. I don’t want you to worry about money for one more second, okay?”

“What about The Center?”

Veronica rolls her eyes. “Practically bled cash the first few months before I insisted on making Archie take real donations, he’s so weird about people giving him money. He can’t say no to anyone, he was practically feeding those kids three meals a day, and between overhead and food and equipment and paying his employees he barely takes home anything. But like I say, passion is priceless.”

The buzzer from downstairs goes off and Veronica goes to the foyer to hold down the button on the box on the wall above the entrance table. “Yes?”

“Miss Katy Keene is here, Miss Lodge.”

“Thank you Smithers, send her up.”

Veronica waits by the door and after a few minutes someone knocks. “It’s me!”

Betty twists over the back of the couch to watch Veronica open the door to a petite girl laden with so many shopping bags all Betty can see of her is huge eyes and a shiny brown bob.

“Hi!” the walking shopping bag squeals. “V, living room?”

“Here, let me help you.” Veronica grabs a few bags and the two of them carry everything to the living room and set all the bags down on the coffee table.

The girl turns to Betty, who resists the instinct to duck and hide in the presence of a new person. “Hi,” she says warmly. “I’m Katy, you must be Betty.”

“Hi,” Betty manages to say.

Veronica puts an arm around Katy. “We went to high school together, this girl is our fashion savior.”

“Oh stop.” Katy laughs. “It’s no big deal, you know I work well under pressure.” She gestures at the shopping bags. “Shall we?”

The first bag she holds up gets placed on the floor. “Intimates,” Katy explains. “Panties, bralettes, sports bras, underwires, socks, those kinds of things.”

Things Betty forgot about, she’s been down to one bra for pretty much two years even though the cups don’t fit as well as they used to. It makes her head spin, the idea of a shopping bag filled with them. She’s still realizing how much of normal life she forgot about while she was gone. In high school she had a whole drawer full of pastel colored underwear and matching bras, tights and camisoles and white knee socks for cheer practice.

Veronica, who’s unpacking another bag, takes out a pair of jeans and sets them in Betty’s lap. “Here, go try these on.”

Betty fingers the tag, staring down at the number in disbelief. “These aren’t my size, I don’t know if they’ll fit.”

Veronica gives her a weird look. “Pretty sure they will.”

“Okay.” Betty carries the jeans to the powder room across from the laundry unit, locks the door and kicks off her shorts.

She really doesn’t think she’ll be able to squeeze into the jeans, they’re a size she’s only fantasized about fitting into, back in high school when she was doing cheer, but to her shock they slide right up her thighs and sit comfortably below her waist. Betty walks back to the living room to show Veronica and Katy, who both nod in approval.

“You were right,” she tells Veronica, sitting back down.

“Those look great on you,” Veronica tells her nicely, and shoves a bundle of fabric at her. “Here, try this on.”

Betty tries on tee shirts and sweaters, leggings and sweatshirts, a pale pink bomber jacket and a heavy grey coat for when it gets colder out, Katy even brought Betty new shoes. By the time they’re done Betty’s exhausted and Veronica’s coffee table looks like a retail store on Black Friday.

“Thank you so much,” Veronica tells Katy. “Seriously, you’re amazing.”

“Oh please, this is my job.” Katy withdraws a small bag from the pile Betty missed before and hands it to her. “A little treat from my girls in cosmetics.”

Betty peeks inside, there are little packages of lipstick, blush, eyeliner, concealer, face cream, brow gel, mascara, tinted moisturizer, an eyeshadow palette. “Thank you,” she murmurs.

“No problem!” Katy says brightly. “Ronnie, I’m meeting Josie for Thai later, you guys want in? I’m sure Josie would love to see you, Betty.”

Veronica glances sideways at Betty. “I think we’re gonna keep it chill tonight, maybe this weekend?”

“Sure,” Katy says easily. “I should run, I wanted to stop at the fabric store on my way home.”

“Working on a new project?” Veronica asks.

Katy grins. “ I always am. Betty, it was so nice to meet you, if you need something I didn’t bring you just tell Veronica, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you.” Betty doesn’t know how to properly handle this girl, her brightness, her oblivious kindness towards the fucked up mess sitting on Veronica’s couch.

“Love you.” Veronica kisses Katy’s cheek. “You’re the best.”

“Love you back.” Katy gives Veronica a quick squeeze. “Bye Betty!”

“Bye,” Betty murmurs.

Veronica walks Katy to the door and locks it behind her when she leaves before coming back to sit on the couch next to Betty as her phone starts buzzing.

“It’s the bar, sorry.” Veronica swipes at the screen and holds the phone up to her ear. “Hello? Hey, what’s up Reggie… _what?_ No, no, no, that’s not… well did you talk to them… that is _not_ right… I know… yeah Reggie, I fucking get it… well did you… seriously? I can’t just… ugh, fine… I said fine, okay? I’ll figure it out.”

Veronica hangs up and drops her phone next to her on the couch so she can rub her temples.

“Is everything okay?” Betty asks tentatively.

Veronica sighs. “Yeah, just a mix up with one of my vendors, and they’re being a pain in the ass and want to deal with me directly.”

“Do you need to go in?”

“I mean, yeah, I would normally, but obviously I can’t leave you here to go to work, Archie would kill me. Reggie will just have to deal with it until I figure out how to get enough vodka stocked for the weekend, I swear, these men are idiots, how hard is it to screw up a standing order? Sorry, not your problem.”

The rock of guilt in Betty’s stomach gets heavier. “If you need to go in, it’s okay.”

“Betty, you heard that guy, we’re not supposed to leave you alone.”

“I don’t think he meant I need a literal babysitter twenty-four seven.”

“Be honest, if I went in would you be okay here by yourself for a few hours until Archie gets back from The Center?”

Betty thinks about it, being alone in this strange apartment with all those windows and the knife block on the kitchen counter and the bottles of pills in her bathroom. “I think if you really need to go to the bar you should, I've already screwed up your life enough.”

“Stop it, you haven’t screwed up anything.” Veronica rubs her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Okay, what if you come with me? The bar is really close, I swear it’s like less than a ten minute walk. I have to deal with this vendor situation but I can put you up front at the bar with Jughead, you’ll be totally safe, I promise. And it’s a Wednesday so it shouldn’t be that busy.”

“Okay,” Betty agrees.

“Are you sure?” Veronica presses. “We don’t have to, really.”

“No, it’s okay,” Betty insists. “It’ll be fine, we should go.”

To her surprise Veronica reaches out and hugs her. “Thank you so much. You can drink for free all night, I promise.”

Betty laughs awkwardly, she hasn’t had a drop of alcohol since she and Archie went out to celebrate finishing fall semester at the end of finals week, only a few days before Betty took the bus up to Syracuse without telling anyone.

“Okay, go, go change.” Veronica gestures at the pile of clothing on the coffee table and picks up her phone. “I’ll let Reggie know I’m coming in, seriously Betty, thank you.”

Betty picks up the new jeans, a soft grey sweater and a pair of socks. “Be right back.”

She goes back to the powder room and puts the new jeans on, marveling all over again at how they fit. She puts on the sweater without looking at her reflection so she doesn’t have to see the scars on her back or the lines of her ribcage, and sits on the floor to pull on the socks. She tightens her ponytail in the mirror, taking in how she looks: she’s too thin and pale but other than that she looks okay, the kind of girl who walks over to a bar with her friend because she’s normal now and that’s what normal people do.

“You got this,” she whispers to herself. “You can do this.”

She doesn’t really know if she believes it but she turns the door handle and goes out to tell Veronica she’s ready to go anyway.


	6. In the City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you waiting for Jughead to finally show up, your moment has come!

Betty doesn’t freak out until she’s standing in the lobby of The Pembrooke with Veronica, the big glass doors held open for them.

“C’mon.” Veronica takes her hand and pulls her through the doorway. “Thanks Smithers, see you later!”

He smiles at them as he closes the doors behind them but Betty barely notices, panic making her lungs tighten painfully. She hasn’t been outside since yesterday morning and she’s already overwhelmed, paranoia making her scan the street, the sidewalk, examining every car, the irrational fear that someone from The Farm is about to jump out of a van and drag her away hitting her so hard she almost falls over.

“Hey, are you okay?” Veronica asks.

If Betty says anything she’s sure she’ll start crying so she shrugs and zips up the pink bomber jacket with trembling fingers.

“Hey.” Veronica takes her hand again. “You know I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, right?”

Betty nods, she doesn’t think there’s anything Veronica could actually do to protect her beyond swinging her designer handbag at someone but she’s known people like this before who believe money and status can protect them. Veronica has no idea what Betty’s really up against but it’s sweet that she thinks she can defend her.

“Okay, the bar is this way.” Veronica pulls Betty down the sidewalk, her hands still holding hers, and Betty lets her.

Veronica points out everything they pass as they walk down the block, as if Betty didn’t live here for over two years in college but it’s sweet, the way Veronica is trying to play tour guide. She points out the Rite Aid Betty saw from her window last night, the local bodega, the diner on the corner that’s open all night. They cross the street, Betty’s hand still held in Veronica’s, two girls swept up in the crowd of nannies pushing strollers, businessmen rushing to late afternoon meetings, college kids in sweatshirts bearing names like _Columbia, Barnard, Fordham._ Betty sees a girl in an NYU hoodie and resists the urge to literally hide behind Veronica, as if the girl would even recognize her.

They walk for a few more blocks, cross an intersection, turn right down another street and stop on the sidewalk in front of a small, low key looking bar sandwiched between a cupcake shop and a boutique. The bar has rows of glass windows that face the street and a heavy wooden door engraved with a huge uppercase _B_.

_Reggie Mantle, I will take you off the schedule at Bees for all of next week._

Betty had misunderstood before, when she heard Veronica on the phone. Not bees, B’s. The letter B.

B as in Betty.

“This is it!” Veronica announces proudly, and yanks on the door handle. 

Betty follows Veronica inside cautiously, looking around as her eyes adjust to the dim light. She’s standing in a little entranceway, a wall with hooks for coats and a bulletin board to her left. She walks behind Veronica through a little doorway to their right and takes in the bar: a row of leather booths line the windows facing the street; the bar itself runs along the opposite wall, all gleaming wood and dark green leather stools, chairs and tables scattered around the room. The far wall has shelves filled with board games and old books, decks of cards, coloring books and packs of colored pencils. 

The overall impression is nice without being stuffy, Betty thinks. It’s the kind of bar she would’ve liked to go to in college, where she could get a drink but also sit down and hang out with her friends.

“It’s not as high end as some of my other establishments,” Veronica tells her. “I was going for a cozy vibe. Like a home away from home.”

“It’s great,” Betty tells her. “Honestly, I don’t know if I could handle something more high energy than this right now, anyway.”

Veronica gives her a sympathetic smile. “C’mon, I’ll introduce you to Jughead. You’ll love him, he’s a little, ah, like, slightly weird and kinda intense but he’s super smart and he’s a writer, you were a journalism major at NYU, right?”

“Yeah,” Betty says softly. It feels like another lifetime, working on the school paper and staying up late writing assignments and hours spent with Archie over late night tacos or pizza helping him study for all his gen-ed classes.

Veronica takes her over to the end of the bar nearest to them and pats a stool for Betty to sit on. There are two people working behind the bar that Betty observes as she hops onto the stool. One of them is a lean guy wearing a beanie shaped like a crown, a few dark locks of hair curling under the brim, wearing a grey tee shirt and jeans. He’s pale, with a tattoo on the inside of one arm that looks like an elaborate _S_. The other one is a girl with dyed purple hair pulled back in a messy bun, dressed in torn jeans and a sheer black tank top, a hot pink bra visible underneath it.

“Hey guys, who’s working in the back tonight?” Veronica asks them.

“I don’t have the entire kitchens’ schedule memorized.” The guy puts down the glass he’s wiping with a dish towel and scans his eyes over Betty, who cowers behind Veronica.

Veronica lets out a sigh that Betty has already learned means that she’s impatient. “Who’s in the kitchen that we can steal to barback?”

“Fangs, Sweet Pea, and Joaquin. Reggie’s in your office calling every vendor we work with, by the way,” the guy answers. “Pretty sure one of them made him cry.”

“Okay, Toni, I’m moving you to head bartender tonight, go get Fangs and tell him he’s barbacking. Jug, I’m cutting you.”

“ _What?_ ” the guy exclaims.

“Sweet.” The girl with the purple hair whips a dish towel at the guy before walking across the other end of the bar and disappearing behind a door.

“Don’t clock out, Jughead. I’m not canceling your shift, I’m giving you a special assignment.” Veronica settles her hands over Betty’s shoulders. “Jughead Jones, meet the one and only Betty Cooper.”

Crystal blue eyes go wide as he looks at Betty for the first time and she wants to duck but Veronica is holding her in place. “Holy shit. Sorry, it’s just, I’ve heard about you from Archie and anyway, hey, nice to meet you.”

“Hi,” she croaks out, wishing she’d put on makeup before she left the apartment. She never used to be shy like this but now every stranger she meets scares her, makes her nervous, and without so much as a layer of mascara to give her a little confidence boost she feels too exposed.

“I have to help Reggie deal with this vendor fuckup, and Archie’s still at the center,” Veronica tells him. “So you are going to stay right here with Betty and keep her company until I finish or Archie shows up, and you aren’t going to let her out of your sight, got it?”

He glances at Betty again before giving Veronica a wary look. “Okay.”

“Thank you.” Veronica spins Betty’s stool around so she’s facing her. “Betty, I’m going to go deal with this vendor situation. I don’t know how long it’s going to take but I’ll be in my office the whole time, so just stay here and hang out with Jughead and when Archie’s done the four of us can have dinner, okay?”

“Okay,” Betty says meekly, partly because it’s not like she has a choice anyway, and partly because she’s gotten good at following orders and there’s something about Veronica that Betty instinctively knows shouldn’t be crossed.

“Okay. I’ll be back as soon as I’m done, okay?”

Veronica gives Betty a tight smile and she doesn’t hug her but she gives her a little shoulder rub before glancing at Jughead. “If anything happens to her before Archie or I get back, life as you know it is over. Forever.”

“Jesus Veronica, I get it.” Jughead gives Betty a wink. “We’ll be fine, right Betty?”

“Right,” Betty agrees, feeling a smidge of confidence at his comradery. 

“Okay, I’m going to go save Reggie’s ass.” Veronica rushes across the bar and disappears behind an alcove.

“So, you want a drink?” Jughead offers Betty.

“I shouldn’t,” she declines.

“You sober?” he asks casually.

“No, I just started some new medications and I don’t know if it’s okay for me to drink on them yet.” Betty flushes. “I don’t know why I just told you that.”

He gives her a gentle smile. “It’s the bartender thing, comes with the territory.”

“So people tell you their deepest, darkest stories?”

“Sometimes. How about a Shirley Temple?”

“That sounds great,” Betty says gratefully.

“No problem.” He turns around to grab a few bottles and a clean cocktail glass. “So, how's it been to be back so far? You used to live in the city when you and Archie were at NYU, right?”

“Yeah.” She doesn’t elaborate and he doesn’t ask her to.

She wonders how much he knows about her. She was gone for almost two years, Veronica clearly knows the whole story. Betty doesn’t know who else Archie's told about her or how much, if everyone she meets now in his and Veronica’s life thinks of her as that crazy girl Archie used to know who joined a cult.

Jughead slides her drink across the bar to her before she can really start spinning out. “Welcome home.”

_Home._

Home was Riverdale, and then a dorm room on NYU’s campus freshman year, the tiny apartment she shared with Archie sophomore year and first semester of junior year before she left and ever since then home has been Polly, wherever her sister lived Betty would follow, and did, because her father was gone and so was her mother and Polly was the only blood relative she had left. Betty owed it to Polly, to not abandon her, leave her to Edgar and his insanity, let her sister be erased and turned into a placid robot.

And now Polly’s gone.

“Thanks,” she says softly to Jughead.

“No problem.” He leans his elbows on the bar. “You think Veronica would care if I have a drink? Since I’m not technically working.”

Betty shrugs. “You know her better than I do.”

He gives Betty a devilish smile and pours himself a glass of whiskey. “Good point.”

The other bartender comes back with a guy with bronzed skin and big arms on display in his plaid shirt with the sleeves ripped off. Jughead hops right over the bar, reaches for his drink and sits down on a stool next to Betty.

“Show off.” The female bartender, _Toni,_ Betty reminds herself, rolls her eyes. “Fangs, start cutting up more limes, what are you doing?”

“So.” Jughead takes a sip of his drink. “How is it being back?”

Betty plays with the zipper of her jacket. “It’s only been a few days.”

“It’s probably a lot to adjust to.”

Betty nods, wildly grasping for anything she knows about him so she can change the subject. “Yeah, I guess. So, um, Archie said you were a writer?”

“Yeah.”

To her surprise he doesn’t puff up when he says it, like all the guys she knew in the English department at NYU. She hopes he’s not one of those nihilistic, self-hating alcoholic writers, the ones who write tortured postmodern novels that are so pretentious they’re barely readable.

“Sorry,” she says. “I know some people don’t like talking about their work.”

He tilts his head at her, like she’s surprised him. “I just don’t want to bore you.”

“Oh.” She smiles shyly. “I was a journalism major actually, so you’re safe.”

His eyes light up. “No way!”

“Guilty as charged. Nancy Drew was my childhood hero, I wanted to be the next Diane Sawyer or something.”

“I was creative writing,” he says excitedly. “Columbia.”

“Have you been published?” She regrets the words as soon as they’re out of her mouth, that’s such a loaded question to ask a writer. She should know better but then again, she’s a little out of practice making small talk with strangers.

He ducks his head like he’s embarrassed. “I got a book contract senior year of high school.”

“What?!”

“I won a short story contest and got an agent. It sounds more impressive than it is, I swear.”

“What was your book about?”

“Ah, it was nonfiction.”

Betty manages to give him a helpless smile. “I don’t know you well enough to tell if you’re being coy or just vague.”

That makes him chuckle. “Sorry, I’m out of practice from hyping it up every night on my book tour, it got published like four years ago. It was sort of like a true crime-memoir hybrid about where I grew up.”

“Wow, that sounds really cool,” Betty says honestly. “And then you went to Columbia?”

“Yeah. As you can imagine, with a reputation of being published at eighteen _everyone_ wanted to be my friend.”

Betty winces, programs like that can be intense and competitive, the pressure of coming into school already being published at that age must have been overwhelming. “What’ve you been working on since you graduated?”

He swirls his glass around. “I’ve been doing freelance mostly, online. Vice, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, sites like that.”

He says it casually, like writing for any of those isn’t an incredible accomplishment, especially right out of school. 

“Not another book?” Betty asks curiously.

“Uh…” Jughead tosses back some of his whiskey. “Yeah, I’m under contract for my second book but I’m still in the research stage.”

“True crime still?”

“Yeah, well, kinda.”

She gets the impression he doesn’t really want to tell her about it. Betty understands, she was like that back in school with her articles sometimes. She didn’t like talking about the rough drafts, it can be hard to explain something when it’s still in the conceptual stage.

“So you freelance on the side?” she asks him. 

“Yeah.”

“What’s your beat? Crime?”

“Mmm, sometimes. I like long form articles. Stories that let me get a chance to know the people involved. I like getting messy, I guess.”

“Like any good reporter should,” Betty says approvingly, and they clink glasses. “And you bartend too?”

“The tips are good and the hours are flexible,” he says with a shrug. “Gotta pay the rent.”

“I haven’t even thought about getting a job,” she admits. 

“I don’t think you need to worry about that.”

“I will eventually.”

“You could go back to school,” he points out.

“I haven’t been enrolled in almost two years. Oh god, I probably have student loans I haven’t been paying, oh my god” -

“Hey, Betty.” He doesn’t touch her but he leans towards her, his hand close to hers on the surface of the bar. “Don’t worry about stuff like that right now, okay?”

“Sorry,” she apologizes. “My head has been all over the place since I’ve been back.”

“Don’t apologize. I just meant, it’s amazing you’re even walking around right now, I think you’re allowed to go easy on yourself.”

She appreciates that he doesn’t come right out and say it but it’s still strange, the way he’s alluding to what happened to her. “I don’t think I’ve really processed anything yet.”

“How’s it been so far?” he asks. “Living with Archie and Veronica?”

“It’s okay. Their place is really nice.”

He laughs. “No shit. I hate them for it.”

“Veronica‘s like, crazy rich, isn’t she?”

“Disgustingly rich. Make you want to punch her in the face rich. Brain breaking rich.”

“Archie did good, huh?”

“He's a hunk with a heart of gold and he can sing. And he has a guitar. In my experience girls always fall for the guy with the guitar,” he says with authority.

“I grew up with Archie, you don’t have to explain his appeal,” Betty says. “I’m happy for them though. They seem pretty good together.”

“They are. Oh, to be young and in love in New York City,” he sighs. “You single?”

“Yeah. I missed a lot of things from the real world but dating? Not so much,” she confesses.

“Not much to miss.” He sips his whiskey. “Especially when you’re a writer with occasional insomnia.”

“You’re in love with your work, aren’t you?” 

He looks down at his drink. “Writing saved me, I guess. It was the only outlet I had.”

“That’s how I felt about books growing up. I couldn’t run away but when I was reading I could go to another country without leaving my bedroom.”

“What kind of issues would you have covered?” he asks. “Did you think about that back when you were in school? Human stories? Arts and Culture? Politics?”

“Yeah.” Betty sips her drink. “I probably would’ve wanted to cover crime. Corruption. All the dark things in the world people don’t want to admit exist. I would’ve stared it right in the face and made people see what’s really out there.”

He gives her a surprised look. “You don’t seem the type.”

“Believe it or not, you aren’t the first person to say that to me,”

He laughs. “I’m sorry. It’s just, you know, the ponytail, and the pink.”

“It’s okay. I like subverting people’s expectations.”

Betty knows she can’t be drunk because she isn’t having alcohol but she’s beginning to feel a kind of confidence she hasn’t felt in years. She’s starting to remember how to hold a normal conversation, how to find a rhythm, how to share, find the back and forth without struggling to find a deeper meaning in every word.

It’s nice. It’s really nice.

“Hey, you wanna play a game?” he asks, gesturing towards the back wall where all the board games and cards are.

“Sure.”

He leads her across the bar over to the back, one hand hovering just behind her. There’s only two of them so they can’t really play a decent game of Clue or Sorry; Betty grabs a pack of cards and brings it back to their seat, shuffles and splits the deck in two. They play War at lightning speed, the rhythm of the game as easy as the conversation. Jughead fills her in on things she's missed while she was gone as they play - political stories, popular movies that came out this year, new musicians, up and coming writers he thinks are going to be big, funny stories about Archie and Veronica she hasn’t heard yet, local news about some other bar or a coffee shop, the latest hot restaurant.

Over an hour later Veronica comes back from the office and climbs up onto a stool next to Betty’s other side, and presses her palms against her temples. “I love my job,” she whispers.

Jughead snorts. “Sure you do.”

“Shut up, I’m doing my mantras!” Veronica snaps, and shuts her eyes. “I love my job. I love my job. I love having money. I love making money. I love employing others and helping them make money. All of my businesses are successful. Everyone wants to work with me. Money comes to me easily. I love how easy it is to make money. I am totally supported in making money.”

Betty stares at her. They used mantras at The Farm too, all the time. Edgar believed words had power, all of them, that the right combination said with intention had the ability to bless or to curse. And he hated money, everything that it stood for, he would find what Veronica is saying completely abhorrent. But when Betty watches Veronica talk it just seems, well... kind of awesome.

“Okay.” Veronica opens her eyes and gives Betty a bright smile. “You hungry? Archie texted me, he’s on his way over. You guys want to grab a booth?”

Betty follows Veronica and Jughead across the bar over to an open booth. Veronica slides into one end and Jughead sits across from her, and Betty decides to sit down next to him so Archie can sit next to Veronica when he gets there. 

Veronica grabs a stack of folded paper menus from her side of the table and slides one across to Betty. “Here, it’s mostly small bites and sandwiches, stuff like that, get whatever you want. I’ll run back and put the order in.”

“Okay.” Betty opens up the menu and stares blankly down at it.

Her eyes skim over the words without really taking them in. She isn’t that hungry and she doesn’t know if it’s because she’s on new meds or if it’s the constant fear and anxiety gnawing at her stomach. She knows she needs to eat something, all she’s done is pick at things all day like a bird, and based on what she’s seen of herself in the mirror and the size tag on the new jeans she’s wearing it’s safe to assume she’s not at a healthy weight right now.

She got used to it at The Farm - the constant ache in her stomach, the strange changes in her eyesight, the black spots that crowded around the edges of her peripheral vision, the lightheadedness. She would dream about food sometimes, in almost obscene detail - the smell of barbecued chicken, the sweetness of biting into a peach, the thick cold texture of a milkshake. She’d wake up with her mouth flooded with saliva, her stomach clenching around nothing.

“Betty?” Veronica is staring at her. “Do you know what you want?”

“Sorry, I’m not sure,” Betty says anxiously. “Maybe something simple?”

“We make a killer grilled cheese,” Veronica suggests.

“Okay, that sounds good,” Betty says with relief.

She doesn’t know how to make choices for herself like this without getting completely overwhelmed and she’s so grateful she wants to cry, that Veronica has saved Betty without her even knowing it.

“Great.” Veronica gives her a smile. “Jug, you want a burger?”

“You know it.” He sips from the glass of whiskey he carried over from the bar.

“Cool, I’ll go put our order in.” Veronica slides out of the booth and goes behind the bar to talk with Toni for a few seconds before disappearing into the kitchen.

Betty sighs quietly to herself and swirls her drink around. She’s starting to feel a little weary, she’s met more people in the past four days than she has since when she first came to The Farm and she thinks about what a relief it will feel like later, to wrap herself up in expensive bedding in Veronica’s guest bedroom in the dark and finally be alone.

Next to her Jughead sips his whiskey in companionable silence. Betty’s glad he’s sitting closer to the window, she knows it’s probably insane to worry that someone from The Farm is going to walk by, happen to see her and drag her away kicking and screaming but she can’t shake the paranoia anyway. 

“You okay?” he asks.

Betty turns her head sharply to look at him. “What?”

“Sorry, I just, you look kind of tense, and I know you’ve had a crazy couple of days, hanging out at a bar with a bunch of strangers is probably the last thing you feel up for right now.”

“It’s okay. I’m probably going to stay with Archie and Veronica for awhile, I’m gonna have to get used to being normal again at some point.”

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I’m sure it’s not the kind of thing you just like, talk about, and especially with someone you just met, but I’ve been bartending here since Veronica opened last spring” -

“Veronica opened a bar her senior year of college?”

“Mommy and Daddy were happy to invest. Anyway, we don’t have to talk about it, I just... wanted you to know that I know, I guess. About what happened to you. So if there’s anything I can do to make this easier, let me know, okay?”

“Thanks,” she murmurs. “That’s really nice of you.”

“I know we just met, but Archie talks about you a lot and… anyway, I can’t imagine what you must be going through. If this is too much, you know you can totally go back to The Pembrooke now, right? Veronica won’t be offended.”

“Thanks, I’m okay. It’s… weird, but it’s probably good for me to get used to being out again like this.”

He nods. “Anything you’re dying to do now that you’re back in the city?”

“I don’t know,” Betty contemplates.

Veronica comes back and slides into the booth. “Food is on its way. What’re we talking about?”

“Everything Betty needs to do now that she’s back in the city.”

“Ooo!” Veronica’s eyes light up. “Well, you already met Katy but we have to do a girls’ night with Josie soon. And shopping! Broadway, obvs, and oh my god, there’s this amazing barre class I go to on Sunday mornings. I’m sure Archie’s gonna drag you to The Center at some point, okay, let’s see, there are some new restaurants we should definitely check out…”

Veronica trails off as her eyes light up, looking past Betty at something she can’t see near the front of the bar. “Archie’s here!”

Betty half-turns in her seat to watch Archie cross the bar over to them, her stomach tightening when she remembers this morning, showing her scars to Agent Smith, Veronica insisting on calling Archie to tell him about it. She’s afraid that Archie will make a big deal about it when he sees her, she’s feeling exposed enough as it is without him freaking out at her for not telling him, but when he gets to the booth he just holds a hand up at Jughead and bends down to kiss the top of Betty’s head before sitting down next to Veronica.

“Hey guys,” he says cheerfully, and he’s smiling but he looks exhausted. “How’s it going?”

“Hi, Archiekins.” Veronica slides close to him and he lifts his arm so she can duck under it and lean against his chest. “There was a little mix up with a vendor but I took care of it. Jughead was kind enough to keep Betty company while I dealt with it. Everything’s fine now, food should be out soon. I ordered you your favorite.”

“Okay. Thanks, babe.” 

Archie rubs his hand up and down Veronica’s arm while giving Betty The Look, the one they made up when they were kids: an eyebrow slightly up, mouth twisted to the side, one finger against the temple. Code, deployed across dining room tables and family rooms and high school classrooms, usually when one of them was getting chewed out by their parents or bombed a test - _you okay?_

Betty nods back at Achie subtly and leans back in the booth. She doesn’t really want to look out the window because watching all those people will just make her more paranoid but she doesn’t want to look at Archie either, not when he can read her so well, so she zones out until a tall guy with dark hair shows up at their table with trays of food. 

“Deluxe grilled cheese,” he announces, setting a plate with a golden brown toasted sandwich dripping with melted cheese and a side of fries down in front of Betty. “A burger for the king of burgers.” He sets a plate with a burger and what looks like a double portion of fries down in front of Jughead. “For my most favorite boss in the whole world” -

Veronica rolls her eyes. “You can skip the speech, Sweet Pea. Just give me my bruschetta already.”

“Yes ma’am.” He sets down a plate in front of Veronica. “How’s it going Archie, got your barbecue right here.”

“Thanks man,” Archie says as a plate with a barbecue chicken sandwich and fries gets put down in front of him.

“Sure thing. Enjoy, guys.” He gives them all a chill wave and saunters off.

Betty looks down at her plate and her mouth waters as she takes in her sandwich. Her diet at The Farm consisted mostly of fruits, vegetables, and fresh eggs from the chickens, and at the hospital she was so messed up she couldn’t really eat. It’s hard to get used to it, the way food, real food, food that feeds both your stomach and your soul, is just _available_ to her again, whenever she needs it. 

She never wants to take it for granted again, the blessing of a full stomach, and she takes her time picking up one half of her sandwich and biting into it and -

And she’s eight years old again, sitting on a high backed chair at the Andrew’s kitchen table next to Archie, his parents eating across from them, feeling very grown up now that her legs are long enough for her toes to touch the floor and when she’s done with her grilled cheese Mary kisses the top of her head as she wipes Betty’s mouth clean so her mother won’t know what the Andrews were feeding her -

Betty swallows, her eyes full of tears, and looks at Archie. “Is this…?”

“Yeah.” Archie grins. “Mom let Veronica have Dad’s recipe.”

“Do you like it?” Veronica asks.

Betty blinks rapidly so she doesn’t cry. “It’s a garbage grilled cheese.”

“We don’t call it that,” Veronica tells her. “No offense, but deluxe sounds much classier.”

“I haven’t had one of these since high school.” Betsy holds her sandwich like it’s priceless and inhales deeply.

“Okay, why _garbage_ grilled cheese?” Jughead asks.

Archie and Betty both laugh. “My dad would throw in anything we had in the fridge,” Archie explains. “Chopped tomato, spinach, avocado, scrambled egg, whatever cheese we happened to have. Eventually he turned it into an actual sandwich. Monterey Jack, Cheddar, and avocado slices with a scrambled egg in the middle on whole wheat slathered in butter.”

“It was the best,” Betty says fondly.

Archie snorts. “He always burned the bread.”

“It tasted better that way!” Betty insists.

“Burnt bread is bad for business,” Veronica advises.

Betty takes another bite, she wants to cry and laugh at the same time, an emotion rising up in her that she hasn’t felt in a long time.

Like she’s really home.


	7. The Sensations of Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve updated the tags so please take a second to check them out before reading, now that Jughead has made his debut we’re going back into the angst.
> 
> I’m staying up a little late to get this posted and I wrote the second half of this chapter in the past three hours so please forgive any typos (and if you find any feel free to lmk so I can fix them tomorrow lol).

Archie catches Betty that night in the doorway of the guest room (regardless of Veronica’s insistence Betty just can’t think of it as hers yet). “Hey,” he says softly, hovering in the hallway while she leans against the doorway. “Do you have a second?”

Betty fidgets, fingers playing with the cuffs of her new sweater. “Where’s Veronica?”

“Taking a shower.” Archie sighs and runs one hand through his hair. “Can we talk about what she told me on the phone earlier?”

Betty crosses her arms across her chest. “What exactly did Veronica tell you?”

“Betty.” Archie blinks rapidly and she realizes with a sinking feeling that he’s about to cry. “I asked you at the hospital if they hurt you.”

“I didn’t say no,” she mutters.

“You didn’t exactly say yes, either.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Arch.”

“Betty, I can't help you if I don’t even know you’re hurt!”

“I’m not hurt,” she says bitterly. “It’s not like it did permanent damage.”

“Veronica says you have scars all the way down your” -

“I know what my back looks like!” Betty snaps.

“Betty.” Archie reaches for her and Betty stumbles back away from him. “Jesus. Hey. Just calm down, okay?”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” she says stubbornly. “I just want to go to bed.”

Archie works his jaw. “We need to talk about this.”

She presses the palm of one hand to her forehead. “I’ve had a really long day. Please Archie, I can’t right now. I’m exhausted.”

He lets out a frustrated sigh. “Okay. Sure. I’m sorry, I just… you know I love you, right?”

Just like that she wilts. “Archie.”

“It’s okay, we can talk in the morning.” He gives her a crooked smile and knocks his fist against the door frame. “Have a good night.”

“Okay. Hey, I love you too.”

Archie’s eyes soften. “I know.”

He gives her an apologetic smile as he shuts the door for her. Betty collapses forward against it, pressing her forehead against the door as she breathes in through her nose for four counts and out through her mouth for another four, and then she thinks, _fuck it_ , and goes into the bathroom to take another one of those pills for anxiety.

She chews the pill up so it’ll hit her faster and strips off all her new brand name clothes. She’s sure the whole outfit retails for somewhere between $200-$500 all together, at least, because she knew a girl freshman year who lived across the hall from her who had ten pairs of this brand of jeans and bragged about how they cost $175 each. Betty stuffs all of it into the cream colored hamper that’s pushed against the wall under the towel rack, turns around so she’s facing the shower and twists her head over her shoulder so she can see the reflection of her back in the mirror.

The scars are circular and roughly the size of baseballs; they run down both sides of her spine from her shoulders all the way to the top of her hips. She knows they’re there but there weren’t a lot of mirrors at The Farm, she’s never really just stood and taken them in before like this.

Polly used to trace her fingers over them sometimes at night, curled up together on the same cot sharing a thin blanket. _I’m sorry, sissy,_ she’d whisper, she hadn’t called Betty that since she was about three but in the middle of the night, curled up together and bone skinny like when they were little girls and already on a diet, because their mother always insisted _it’s never too early to start_ , the strangest things from their childhood would come out. 

Near the end, before Betty had her plan put together, she and Polly started to act towards each other in a way they hadn’t since they were very little. Polly would hold Betty at night and hum in her ear, and Betty would clutch onto Polly’s arm like she did when she was a baby or else she wouldn’t be able to sleep. In some ways it was like being back there, in that house in Riverdale, tiny and helpless, clinging to her big sister to protect her from her father’s intermittent rage and her mother’s quick temper.

Just two defenseless little girls, alone and afraid, with no one they could trust but each other. Edgar once told them in the middle of a session that they were trauma bonded and neither one of them disagreed with him.

Betty turns back around and lifts her arms up. Her bra size has gone down at least a full cup and her ribs press up against her skin with so much definition it makes her wince. She runs one hand down her concave stomach, cups her jutting hip bones while she stares in wonder at this sickly bony creature in the mirror with huge eyes and painfully sharp collarbones.

 _Where did you go?_ she thinks, running her fingers under her cheekbones. _Where did you go?_

She goes back into the bedroom naked and looks at the floor, where all the shopping bags Veronica’s friend brought her earlier are piled up next to the boxes of Betty’s old stuff. The idea of digging through all those new clothes to find something to sleep in is too overwhelming, Betty grabs one of the smaller bags Katy said were full of intimates and tips it upside down over her bed. 

Lacy thongs and pastel colored bralettes and pairs of socks fall out along with sports bras and underwires and boy shorts. Betty digs through all the underwear until she finds a pair of simple black briefs, removes the tag and pulls them on. She sweeps everything else back into the bag and tosses it onto the floor, picks up her old Vixens hoodie where she left it folded on the desk and yanks it over her head, too tired to bother with a bra.

She gathers up all the bedding like she did the night before and makes a little nest under the window before standing up to do her evening rituals. She doesn’t cry this time, she barely has the energy to move through the postures, her voice struggling to say the words after talking more in one day that she’s spoken in years.

When she’s finished she crawls across the unbelievably soft rug over her pile of blankets and curls up in the middle of it. She misses Polly so much it hurts but she’s so drained from the day that she doesn’t have the energy to cry about it. She wraps her right hand over her left wrist and squeezes hard, and when that doesn’t work she brings her hand up to her mouth and puts the edge of it into her mouth, right between her teeth, and idly gnaws at it until she falls asleep.

*

She wakes up on her back, pinned by someone’s hands and knees holding her down against the floor.

Betty screams, or maybe she’s already screaming, her body thrashing around in panic. The body above her is strong and she hits out, slapping at muscled arms with her hands, and she’s screaming so loud she doesn’t hear the other person saying her name at first, and then her eyes adjust or maybe she didn’t even have them open before, because she looks up at the face of the person pinning her to the floor and it’s Archie.

“You’re okay, you're okay,” he’s saying, over the sound of her screams. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

“Let me go!” she shrieks, the nightmare still fresh in her mind, the hands holding her down as she screamed and tried to thrash out of their hold as pain sliced through her back. “Let go of me, let me go, let me go, get off of me!”

The weight of his hands disappear and Betty scrambles out from under him and crawls backwards until she hits the wall. Archie moves towards her and Betty screams again, cowering under the window as she curls her knees up to her chest.

“Betty, it’s just me,” Archie says, his voice gentle and a little shaky. “It’s okay. It was just a bad dream.”

She starts hyperventilating, the phantom sensation of hands on her making her feel claustrophobic, and Archie leans over her but when he touches her shoulder she kicks out reflexively to defend herself.

“Hey, stop, I’m not going to hurt you,” he murmurs.

“Don’t,” she gasps. “Don’t, don’t, don’t” -

He uses some kind of wrestling move to flip them around so he’s sitting on the floor with his back against the wall with Betty sideways in his lap, his arms coming tightly around her to hold her to his chest.

“It’s okay,” Archie says, trying to restrain her. “Calm down, you’re okay, you’re safe.”

“I can’t breathe,” she chokes out, her feet kicking at the floor. “I can’t, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe”

“Hey, hey, you’re okay, you’re hyperventilating, I’ve got you. Just breathe, okay?”

She doesn’t know if she’s crying or gasping for air or both, her chest is so tight it feels like it’s on fire, just like when they hurt her back and she clutches at Archie’s tee shirt as she shakes and jerks in his arms.

“Is she having a panic attack?” It’s Veronica, Betty didn’t even know she was in the room.

“I don’t know,” Archie says tightly. “I’ve never seen her have one.”

“I think she has pills for that, hang on.” Betty distantly hears Veronica cross the room and come back a minute later.

She crouches down in front of Betty and Archie, a cup of water in one hand and a pill in the other. She tries to give it to Betty but her hands are shaking too hard to take it so Veronica places the pill in the center of Betty’s palm and puts her hand under Betty’s to help her bring her hand to her mouth. Archie gives her the water, her head tipped back, and Betty swallows with a cough before flopping her head down on Archie’s shoulder. She feels exhausted and wrung out, adrenaline slowly leaking out of her.

“Are you okay if I go back to bed?” Veronica asks Archie.

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll be fine,” Archie tells her.

Veronica reaches towards Betty but Betty flinches and tucks her head under Archie’s chin, and Veronica drops her hand instead of touching her. 

“Feel better, Betty,” she says softly, and quietly gets up and leaves the room.

Betty curls into Archie, her body relaxing at the anticipation of relief from the medication. His arms stay tight around her and instead of feeling trapped it starts to feel good, like she’s in a little protective shell or something, her soft, weak body held in strong arms is such an unfamiliar sensation at this point that she doesn’t know how to process it.

Archie doesn’t say anything for a while. He holds her against his chest, one hand cradled over the side of her head, rocking them side to side a little until her breathing starts to even out.

“Feeling a little better now?” he asks quietly.

She lets out a shuddery exhale. “What happened?”

“You must have been having one hell of a bad dream because you started screaming so loudly it woke me and Veronica up.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“No, Betty, it’s fine, that’s not the point. You were _screaming._ ”

“It was just a bad dream,” she mumbles.

His thumb sweeps back and forth across her temple. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She shivers, no, no, she does not want to talk about it. “Arch?”

“Hmm?”

“Would you...” she fumbles over the words and chickens out.

“What?”

“Would you… would you sing to me for a little bit?”

He smooths a stray lock of hair off her forehead. “Any requests?”

“Did you write anything while I was gone?”

He lets out a huff of breath. “Yeah.”

“Can I hear one?”

She can feel it when his breath catches. “Okay.”

He hums a few bars of a melody before starting to sing. He sings her a sing about a boy who’s lost the girl he loves and when he’s finished she whispers, “Another one, please.”

Archie rocks her in his arms and sings her songs about boys with broken hearts, girls who get blinded by darkness, he sings about grief and heartache and loss in a soft, low voice until she falls asleep.

*

Betty wakes up tucked into the queen sized bed, sunlight streaming in through the cracks in the curtain. Her head pounds and her eyes feel swollen from crying. Betty groans, once at the hell of being awake and again at the humiliation of last night, the way she completely lost control. She manages to crawl out from under the thick duvet cover, Archie must have carried her to bed and tucked her in once she fell asleep.

She drags herself out of bed and shrugs out of her hoodie before going into the bathroom. Betty peels her panties off and tosses them into the hamper, takes her hair out of her ponytail and gets in the shower. She stands under the hot water for a long time, shame hot in her chest. She had what her mother could call a fit, what Edgar ould disdainfully call a tantrum. She doesn’t do that anymore, let herself be vulnerable in front of people. At The Farm it was considered weakness, and dangerous too, lest it lead Edgar to believe you needed a healing to treat it.

She never let them see her cry. She screamed, she fought, she spit, but she did not cry, not in front of The Farmies. Edgar only got her to break down a few times and even then it was only because he’d pushed her so far she couldn’t fight anymore.

She washes her hair eventually, quickly shaves and gets out of the shower. She wraps herself up in one of the fluffy towels resting on the towel rack and sits down on the lid of the toilet seat to put lotion on her legs. Her fingernails are a mess, cracked and jagged, so when she’s done applying lotion she gets out the manicure kit she saw before and looks for a nail file, but she finds the scissors first.

They’re tiny and silver, they unfold in half to reveal pointed blades. Betty slowly opens them, turns her left wrist up and sets it on top of her thigh. She brings the tip of the scissors to her skin, doesn’t push, doesn’t cut, just breathes with the metal against her skin. It’d be so easy, all she’d have to do is tug it across the thin skin. It might feel good too, the way digging her nails into her palms used to calm her down in high school. It never felt like pain until later, dabbing antibiotic cream on the stinging open cuts. 

She could do it. Just enough to make a scratch, just enough to get a taste of that old feeling, pain bleeding out of her and purifying her. This might be one of the only parts of her Edgar understood - the need to bleed out the bad to purify oneself, the elevation of the mind over the physical pain, the blatant proclamation that the body was separate, merely a suit to be worn over a soul, proof that the mind has dominion over the base urges of the body.

And then she thinks about Polly, starving and freezing somewhere, and puts the scissors away with shaking hands. Betty doesn’t deserve the luxury of self pity right now, not when she’s clean and warm from the shower, not when there are nice clothes and real food waiting for her outside the bathroom.

She doesn’t get to feel sorry for herself, not when Polly is out there suffering. Betty has to stay strong, she has to keep her head clear, whenever they do find Polly she’s going to need her sister and Betty has to be ready for that.

Betty rubs a brush through her wet hair and ties it back, moisturizes her face and applies concealer around her eyes so they don’t look so red before going back to her room to get dressed.

She feels the same level of overwhelm she did last night when she looks at the bags of clothes. She starts with the bag with all the underwear and pulls out the first thong her fingers find, rips off the tag and pulls the sheer pink material on. Next she grabs a bag filled with leggings, running shorts, jeans, and tights, and uses the same method, plucking a scrap of soft grey material out with her fingers that turn out to be a pair of leggings with mesh panels on the sides. 

Betty puts them on and sighs at the realization that she’s only half dressed, she has no idea why the simple act of picking out clothing, something she always liked, has become an exhausting chore she barely has the energy for. She rubs her eyes and digs around in the intimate bag until she comes up with a plain black bralette and tugs it over her head. She doesn’t bother trying to pick out a shirt, she puts her Vixens hoodie back on and sits on the edge of her bed.

According to the small digital clock on the nightstand it’s almost nine, Betty has no idea when she went back to sleep after her nightmare but based on how tired she still is she gathers it was pretty late. The same kind of anxiety she felt yesterday morning rushes through her, she doesn’t know if Veronica and Archie are up yet, if either of them have to go into work. She’s too afraid to leave her room, she doesn’t want Veronica to think she’s snooping or going places in the apartment that might be off limits.

She doesn’t remember how to live without the kinds of rules on The Farm. It was always Betty’s choice to follow them or not but they were there, giving her a firm structure, comforting in a strange way. She knew who she was allowed to speak to and in which way, what parts of The Farm were off limits. It became easy, to forget how to think for herself when all the rules were laid out for her, when she didn’t have any decisions to make. Her days were scheduled from five am when they all woke for morning meditation all the way through eleven in the evenings to do their nightly ritual.

She isn’t there anymore but that kind of programming takes more than a few days to break. There were consequences, on The Farm, for breaking a rule but at least Betty understood what they were, she knew the outcome of every choice before it was made.

Here there are no rules, Archie and Veronica let her float around the apartment following them like a baby duckling, like Betty is a soft like thing who can’t take care of herself but it makes her nervous, not knowing the rules here, how far Veronica could get pushed before she decides hosting Betty was the worst idea ever and convincing him to dump Betty on some stranger.

The idea of getting kicked out of the apartment makes her stomach hurt. She’s still warming up to Veronica but the idea of not being with Archie is terrifying, Betty doesn’t think she’ll be able to survive this without him. Other than Polly he’s the only connection to her old life she has left, the only person in the world right now who knows her birthday, her favorite book, her history of tearing apart her palms with her fingernails.

The things her parents did.

Archie is the only thing she has that makes her feel like a real person. Without him to remind her of who she really is it would be so easy to forget, to let her identify drift away the way it did at The Farm, no matter how hard she resisted. 

Without Archie, Betty might completely separate from who she was before, slide back to the girl she became at The Farm.

She rushes into the bathroom and chews up a pill for anxiety before shaking out one of the antidepressants and swallowing it from the tap cus she figures there’s no point in taking them unless she’s consistent. She should probably call that doctor, find the card Charles gave her and set up an appointment to at least go over her meds, but the idea of having to go through the effort of scheduling something is too much for her right now, she can barely think straight.

She goes back to her bed and decides to wait until Veronica or Archie come get her like yesterday. She idly chews on her nails, legs jiggling with nerves, wondering if they’ll leave her here, in her room, and after the way she behaved last night. Archie might’ve had an idea of what he was signing up for Veronica sure as hell didn’t, Betty wouldn’t blame them if they were punishing her for waking them up like that last night.

Something in her room goes _ding!_ and Betty jerks so hard she almost falls off the bed. Her head whips around, following the sound. The phone Veronica bought her is lighting up as it beeps, nestled in its slim white box on the nightstand. Betty crawls across the bed to it and carefully pops the phone out of the box. The name _Archie_ is displayed in the middle of the screen.

Betty stares down at his name on the screen for a minute. She’d gotten so used to not having a phone at The Farm that she’d actually forgotten Veronica had bought her one. She taps on Archie’s name to pull up the text: _You up?_

 _Yeah_ , she texts back, her fingers shaking a little like she’s doing something illicit. 

She bites her lip as she waits for another text from him to appear: _Come into the kitchen? Veronica and I are making breakfast._

 _Okay,_ Betty texts him.

She puts the phone back down on the nightstand and slips out of the room, pads quietly down the hallway past the closed door to the master bedroom, and hooks a left to go into the kitchen. Veronica is sitting at the island picking at a bowl of strawberries while Archie cooks something on the stove, toast is in the toaster and the whole room smells like coffee.

“Hey,” Archie calls out, sleepy looking and rumple haired, wearing an NYY hoodie and a pair of sweatpants. “Morning.”

“Hey,” Betty says shyly, still embarrassed about the way she fell apart last night.

“Hi Betty, come sit down!” Veronica says cheerfully, pushing a mug across the island. “Here, I made coffee.”

“Thanks.” Betty gets onto a stool and wraps her hands around the mug of coffee.

“Is it okay if we talk about last night?” Veronica asks gently.

Betty hangs her head as her cheeks flush. “I’m sorry I woke you up, I’ll try not to do it again.”

When she finally gets the courage to look up at Veronica she’s staring at Betty with her mouth dropped open. “No, Betty, that’s not what - did you seriously think we’d be mad that you had a nightmare? After all the shit you’ve been through?”

Betty takes a sip of coffee to distract herself from the way she feels like she’s going to cry. “So what did you want to talk about?”

“Last night, when we came into your room, you were sleeping on the floor. Is… is there something wrong with the bed? Is it not comfortable or something? We can always replace the mattress, just please let me know. You’re our guest, we want you to be comfortable.”

Betty’s bottom lip trembles. “The bed is amazing. Seriously, it’s the nicest bed I’ve ever had.”

Veronica’s eyebrows pinch together. “Then why are you sleeping on the floor?”

Betty puts the mug down when her hands start shaking. “I haven’t slept in a real bed since college. I’m not really used to it yet.”

“What do you mean?” Veronica asks tightly.

Betty tries to shrug, like she doesn’t care. Luxury was a foreign concept at The Farm, physical pleasure ephemeral and ultimately unimportant, not when their ultimate goal was to evolve beyond the body anyway.

“We slept in one night room together on cots,” Betty explains quietly, aware that Archie is probably listening to them. “I shared one with my sister.”

A look flashes across Veronica’s face that Betty can’t interpret. “You must miss her.”

“Yeah,” Betty says thickly. “It’s… hard being away from her.”

“Hey, Betty, you know you can talk to me and Archie about this, right?” Veronica asks. “We care about you, we want you to be comfortable here.”

“Thank you,” Betty whispers. “That’s really nice of you.”

“I can help,” Veronica says simply. “So I should.”

Betty is starting to understand why Archie fell in with Veronica.

The toast pops and Veronica goes over to the counter to grab three plates, puts a buttered slice of toast on each and carries the plates over to the island.

“Here.” Veronica puts one down in front of Betty. “Help yourself to the strawberries, you look like you need all the nutrition you can get.”

“Ronnie,” Archie chastises softly as he comes over with a plate of bacon and sets it down on the table as Betty takes a bite of toast.

She inhales the smell of bacon and -

 _Hands holding her down on the table, the smell of burning flesh, her own voice unfamiliar and animalistic in its pain as she begged for them to stop_ -

She chokes on the toast and coughs a few times as the toast comes back up, making her gag. Archie and Veronica rush off their stools towards her but Betty stumbles around them and rushes over to the sink so she can make it in time to dry heave into it.

“Betty, oh my god!” Veronica rushes over and puts one cool hand over the back of Betty’s neck, and the touch is enough to make her drop to the ground, back pressed against the cabinet under the sink as she curls up in a ball.

“Betty.” Archie crouches down in front of her next to Veronica. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, just look at me, okay?”

Her eyes are watering and her mouth tastes sour, she wants to flip the hood of her sweatshirt up and bury her face in her hands but there’s nowhere she can hide where Archie won’t follow. She’s too weak to fight him right now.

“Hey,” he says softly. “You’re okay. You’re safe. You’re in our apartment and no ones going to hurt you anymore, okay?”

Betty can’t speak, tears slide down her cheeks as she shivers, trying to believe Archie but right now she just can’t get there, every cell in her body is vibrating with fear and unable to really take in what he’s saying.

“Betty, it’s okay.” Veronica doesn’t try to touch her again but she gives Betty an encouraging smile. “You can talk to us. We’re right here.”

Some cognizant part of Betty is aware that Veronica’s just trying to be sweet but Veronica doesn’t know what she’s saying, she has no idea what Betty could tell her, the kind of horrors Betty’s trying to protect her from.

Betty looks at Archie as she blinks more tears out of her eyes, and shakes her head firmly. _No._

“Betty,” Archie pleads.

“I can’t,” she says hoarsely. “I can’t. Please.”

“This is all my fault,” Veronica sighs. “I pushed you too hard yesterday. I made you go out when you obviously weren’t ready yet” -

“No,” Betty argues weakly. “No, I said it was okay” -

“Betty.” Veronica’s voice is patient sounding yet firm. “Please don’t take this the wrong way but I don’t think you can be trusted to make the right choices for yourself right now.”

“Veronica,” Archie says tightly.

“What?” Veronica snaps at him. “You two can play the denial game all you want but Betty isn’t okay. She’s sleeping on the floor, she’s having nightmares, she’s weird about food, it was the bacon that set you off, wasn't it, Betty?”

Betty stares at her. “How did you know?”

Veronica shrugs. “As soon as he put the plate down you started turning white, it was kind of obvious.”

“Oh.” Betty swallows back the taste of bile. “It was, the smell, it… reminded me of something.”

“Of what?” Archie asks her.

Betty blinks and tears slide out of the corners of her eyes. “Something bad.”

He doesn’t reach for her but he slides around to sit next to her under the sink, shoulder gently brushing up against hers. “I’m taking the day off, me and Veronica are gonna hang out here with you.”

“Archie” -

“This isn’t up for discussion,” Veronica says quietly. “We expected too much too soon and that’s our fault. It hasn’t even been a week since you… you need to rest. You’ve been through a lot lately and it won’t hurt any of us to take a little break, okay? Don’t even worry about it.”

Betty picks at the seam of her new leggings. “I don’t want to be like, a burden you guys are stuck with.”

“Hey.” Archie bumps his shoulder against hers. “Don’t stay stuff like that.”

“We’re happy to have you,” Veronica insists. “Really. I’m sorry if we haven’t been as sensitive to your situation or made you do things you weren’t ready for. We’ve never really had any experience in…”

“De-brainwashing an ex cult member?” Betty asks dryly.

“You aren’t brainwashed.” Archie reaches out slowly, so she sees him coming, and squeezing her knee. “It’s just gonna take you awhile to readjust. How bought I toss the bacon and make something else for breakfast? Think you can eat something?”

Her face feels hot, all these little humiliations like rocks in her stomach. “You don’t have to do that.” 

“It’s fine, come on.” Archie helps her stand up. “I’ll make cereal, is that okay? Something simple.”

“Okay. Thanks,” she manages to get out.

“Come here.” Veronica puts a gentle hand on Betty’s shoulder and leads her back over to the island. “Just hang in there girl, okay? You’re going to get through this.”

Betty thanks her polity and gives her a hollow smile but she doesn’t believe a word Veronica says right now, and if Veronica knew everything Betty’s been through she wouldn’t believe herself either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jughead will be back very soon, promise


	8. Hollow Spaces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m back and so is Jughead :)

Betty spends the morning sitting on her bed while Veronica unpacks everything Katy brought over for her and organizes all her drawers for her. Betty watches Veronica flit around the room, mystified as she watches Veronica work with a rhythmic kind of intensity. She’s the kind of girl Betty was in awe of in college, someone who seems to know how to do everything with ease, a certain kind of self assuredness Betty admires. What it must be like, to have perfect confidence in one’s ability to execute a task.

“Thanks,” Betty says awkwardly, watching Veronica fold pair after pair of leggings.

Veronica winks as she opens a dresser drawer and starts putting the leggings away. “Don’t worry about it, I’m excellent at organizing clothes. I’m practically a professional. I have superior spatial recognition, it comes in handy.”

“I’m not used to having this much stuff,” Betty confesses.”I wouldn’t even know what to do with it.”

Veronica gives her a look that’s teetering on horror. “Didn’t you wear clothes… where you were?”

“Of course we wore clothes, we just… had rules about them.”

“What kind of rules?”

“We could only wear white. They took away the clothes I brought after I got there, when I missed the start of spring semester…” Betty has to inhale sharply against the memory, the hot shame of her decision to stay with Polly and do whatever it took to get her out, even if it meant faking it at The Farm and missing school, if she knew they were never going to let her leave -

“Betty?” Veronica gives her a concerned look.

Betty clears her throat. “Sorry. They took all my stuff and gave me what everybody else wore. It wasn’t much.” 

Veronica comes over to the edge of the bed and starts folding tee shirts. “Why white?”

Betty shrugs, curling her arms a little tighter around her knees. “It was… their leader said it represented purity. It was sort of a spiritualist group.”

Veronica chews on her bottom lip for a moment. “Did they believe in god?”

“Um…. it was really more about their leader. Everyone worshipped him, they thought he was like a god, I guess.”

“Does he have superpowers?” Veronica asks wryly.

“It’s… hard to explain. The kind of person he was to have people react to him like that.”

“Like what?”

Betty picks at her cuticles. “It was like they were all hypnotized by him.”

Veronica shudders. “That sounds creepy as hell.”

“I’m not really supposed to talk about it.”

“Hey.” Veronica doesn’t reach over and touch her but she slides a little closer to Betty on the bed. “You can’t get in trouble for that. You’re not there anymore, right?”

“Right,” Betty answers faintly.

“So I guess there’s like… a lot to adjust to,” Veronica says tentatively.

Betty nods, breathing against the stomachache she’s starting to get. “Yeah.”

“Do you… want to talk about it more?”

“Um…” Betty gives Veronica a helpless look. “I’m still a little overwhelmed.”

“Of course,” Veronica says immediately, and jumps up to organize Betty’s new shoes.

*

Veronica escorts Betty to the kitchen when it’s time for lunch. Archie’s already there, making a turkey sandwich for himself on thick whole wheat bread.

“Hey,” he says, flashing them both a smile. “Ronnie, you want one?”

“Sure, thanks Archiekins.” Veronica gently touches Betty’s elbow. “Betty, do you want one too?”

“Um…” Betty contemplates, she still feels a little sick after this morning. “Would it be okay if I had… never mind, I don’t want to put you out or anything” -

“Hey, stop.” Veronica slides her fingers down and curls them loosely around Betty’s wrist. “You’re allowed to have whatever you want, okay? You don’t have to have something just because Archie and I are.”

Betty feels like she’s going to cry. Everyone at The Farm ate the same things, clean simple food that kept their bodies pure and light, no one got special treatment. “Are you sure?”

Veronica looks like she wants to hug Betty but she just rubs her thumb against her wrist. “You had a lot of rules there, right?”

“Yeah,” Betty sniffs.

“Okay.” Veronica gives her a kind smile. “Well, we have different rules. You’re allowed to eat anything in the kitchen and you don’t have to ask permission first either. Okay?”

“Have some protein though,” Archie adds, slicing up an avocado. “You need to start getting all your macros.”

“Oh my god.” Veronica rolls her eyes at Betty. “Ignore him. Archie is obsessed with macros.”

“Nutrition is important!” Archie protests. “Besides, you don’t know what kinds of crazy diets her mom had her and Polly on when they were kids” -

“Archie!” Betty’s cheeks flame.

“Sorry.” Archie puts down the knife he was using and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I know this is awkward to talk about but let’s be real Betty, the only time you’ve ever been allowed to eat whatever you wanted was when you were at NYU and you’re obviously malnourished right now” -

“Okay, Archie, she gets it. Can we not be obsessive about this?” Veronica snaps. “You’re harping.”

“Fine.” Archie throws his hands up in the air. “I’m sorry for caring!”

“Please don’t fight,” Betty starts to cry. “I’m sorry, I’ll eat a sandwich!”

“Now look what you did!” Veronica glares at him and puts an arm around Betty’s shoulders.

Archie locks his jaw. “Veronica, can you finish making the sandwiches please?”

Veronica and Archie share a look that Betty can’t interpret but then Veronica drops her arm and walks over to the counter to finish up the sandwiches. Archie comes over to Betty and wraps his arms around her and she lets herself crumple into him, seeking refuge in the one person she had left who really knows who she is.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I wasn’t trying to embarrass you.”

Betty nods into his chest, tears sliding out of the corners of her closed eyes. “I know.”

“It’s just, you were finally in a good place with this stuff and then you left and they were obviously starving you. I’m just worried about you, it’s really… not good, what your body went through.”

She shivers in his arms. “I’ll be okay.”

“Betty, I swear I’m only saying this because I care about you but… you don’t look good right now.”

It doesn’t hurt as much as she thought it would, because it’s true and they both know it. “I know.”

“You look sick, Betty.” Archie sounds upset.

“Don’t be mad,” she whispers. “I don’t want you guys to fight because of me.”

“No, no, we’re not, it’s okay,” Archie soothes. “She’s worried about you too, that’s all.”

Betty lets out a shuddery exhale. “I’m sorry I’m so fucked up.”

“We just want to help you, okay? You don’t have to worry about us on top of everything else. Let’s make you some lunch, you’ll feel better after you eat something.”

Betty snorts. “You sound like your mom.”

“Hey, she never lets us go hungry.”

“True,” she admits. “Can we… is it okay if I have something light? It’s still a lot to adjust to.”

“I could make you a smoothie,” he offers.

“Okay,” she sighs. “If… only if you don’t mind.”

“I’m putting protein powder in it,” he tells her.

“Okay,” she says again, helpless.

Archie pats her back. “Go sit down.”

Betty obediently slinks away and sits down at the island. A minute later Veronica brings two sandwiches over, sits down across the island from Betty, and leans forward. “Betty, I’m so sorry. We don’t mean to overwhelm you but we keep seeming to do it anyway.”

“It’s not your fault.” Betty wipes under her eyes with a napkin. “I’m just… it’s kind of hard to get used to having different rules.”

“Betty.” Veronica looks worried. “Did you like… get in trouble if you didn’t follow the rules when you were… gone?”

Betty goes rigid. “Mhmm.”

“Okay.” Veronica’s voice sounds tense. “You know that won’t happen here, right? Archie and I would never… you’re safe here. We want you to feel safe here. If we’re arguing it’s only because it’s really important to both of us that we get this right.”

“Get what right?”

“Helping you,” Veronica says softly. “I know the two of you are basically family. Archie told me about the pact you guys have.”

_We made a deal. We stick together, no matter what._

“He told you about that?”

“It’s okay, Betty, I get it. The two of you are a package deal. If I was lucky enough to have a friend I was that close to when I was little I’d probably feel the same way. And I know that you and I don’t really know each other yet but I’m hoping that with time, you and I can be friends too.”

Betty manages to give her a weak smile. “I’d like that. Archie obviously… you must be really special. To want to put up with all this.”

Veronica laughs. “Families are always complicated. God knows Archie has suffered at the hands of mine plenty. Not that I’m suffering having you here, I promise! It’s nice really, this place feels too big for just the two of us anyway.”

“Thank you,” Betty murmurs. “You’ve been… thank you for being so nice to me.”

“You don’t have to… of course. You’re family, Betty.”

_We are your true family, Betty. We love you in a way deeper than everything you have ever known. Give yourself to us, you beautiful girl. Give us your darkness, your shame, your every fear and reveal your true self to us. We’ve been waiting for you. We love you, Betty._

“Here, Betty.” She's jolted out of her memories by Archie setting a tall glass with a straw in front of her. “Strawberry banana.”

“Thanks Archie.” She leans forward and takes a tentative sip.

“Is it okay?” he asks as he sits down next to Veronica and picks up his sandwich.

Betty swallows and nods. “Yeah, it’s good. Thank you.”

He grins at her. “No problem.”

“So.” Veronica smiles brightly at both of them. “Betty, what would you like to do after lunch?”

Betty hunches over her smoothie, she still isn’t used to this much focused attention twenty-four seven and it makes her uncomfortable, like she always has eyes on her. “I don’t care.”

“We could watch a movie,” Archie suggests. “There’s, um, a lot of stuff you missed.”

“Sure,” she agrees, because it’s not like she has anything else to do.

“Ronnie?” he asks Veronica.

Veronica winks at Betty. “I’ll make popcorn.”

*

Betty spends the afternoon on the couch sandwiched between Archie and Veronica like a child being babysat. Veronica choses two romcoms for them to watch featuring beautiful actors and brainless plots. They’re perfect for Betty, who took another one of those anxiety pills after lunch, her mind wrapped up in a soft gauzy layer of pharmaceuticals.

She vaguely wonders if she’s getting too dependent on them but she doesn’t really care about that right now, because at least she feels like she can sit on a couch and watch a movie without having a meltdown. With every breath she takes she feels her sister’s absence, a hollowness under her rib cage that hasn’t left her since the night she left Polly. She wonders how long it’ll take for it to go away and then immediately feels sick with guilt. She’s the one who got out, she can only imagine how badly Polly must be suffering right now, on the run and at the mercy of a madman, without her sister to protect her.

Archie’s phone starts buzzing after the second movie ends while Veronica’s in the kitchen seeing what they have to throw together for dinner. Archie swipes at his phone, glancing sideways at Betty as he stands up and answers.

“Hey Jug, what’s up… nah, not really… oh man that sounds _so_ good but I don’t know, I have to talk to Veronica first…” Archie glances over at Betty again. “It was kind of a rough night, we’re trying not to push it. Just hang on a second.”

Archie holds the phone away from his ear and pushes open the door to the dining room. “Hey V, can you come here for a minute?”

After a few seconds Veronica pops through the door, her raspberry colored sweater sleeves pushed up to her elbows. “So we have exactly one box of pasta in our entire kitchen, what can we do with that?”

“Jughead is offering to drop off Shake Shack,” Archie tells her. 

“Oh my god, that sounds so good,” Veronica groans, and looks apprehensively at Betty. “I don’t know about tonight though. Do you think that’s too much?”

“What’s going on?” Betty asks.

“Jughead is offering to pick us up Shake Shack and bring it over,” Archie repeats to her.

“But I don’t know if tonight is the best night for it,” Veronica adds.

“Why not?” Betty pushes. It’s irritating, the way they’re both acting like she can’t hear them talking, like she’s a dumb little kid who can’t make decisions for herself.

“I think we pushed it a little too hard last night,” Veronica says gently. “We don’t want to overload you again.”

“It’s not like we’d be going out though,” Betty argues. “It’s just Jughead.”

“Betty, you had a really bad night,” Archie points out. “Are you sure you can handle another person right now?”

It makes her irate, how overprotective they’re both acting, like Betty is a small child who can’t make any choices for himself.

“I like Jughead,” she says sullenly. “He’s my friend. Why can’t he stop by?”

Veronica and Archie both look at each other for a long moment before he holds the phone back up to his ear. “Yeah, okay, come on over,” he says to Jughead.

“I’m getting a class of wine,” Veronica says, with all the weariness of an exhausted mother who’s been chasing a toddler all day, and disappears through the door to the dining room.

Archie hangs up and comes back over to sit next to Betty. “So you and Jughead hit it off yesterday, huh?”

Betty shrugs. “He’s nice.”

“You’re that sick of me and Ronnie already, huh?” he jokes.

“Of course not, I just… I don’t like feeling like you two are babysitting me.”

“We’re just” -

“I know. You’re just worried about me.”

“Can you blame us?”

“I just… it’s nice to feel normal, I guess.”

“Jughead makes you feel normal and we don’t?”

“Oh my god, Archie, stop, I barely know him. I just meant, it’s nice to do something normal. Like have a friend over for dinner.”

“Okay.”

“You’re the one who said I’d like him.”

“I know. I just don’t want you to feel like, like you have to start socializing immediately or anything. Meeting new people is probably a lot right now.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “It is. It just um… didn’t really feel like that with him I guess.”

Archie tilts his head curiously. “What do you mean?”

“It was more like… talking to someone I’d known forever. We talked about writing and stuff, it was… it was nice.”

“Okay.” He gives her a gentle smile. “That’s good. I’m glad you feel comfortable with him.”

Veronica comes back into the living room clutching a wine glass almost filled to the brim with some kind of red, and a cocktail glass of what looks like whiskey. “I come with drinks. Wait, Betty, do you want one? We have wine, gin, rum, whiskey, vodka…”

“No thanks,” Betty declines. “I’m on… that doctor put me on some medications, I don’t know if it’s okay for me to drink on them.”

Veronica hands off the whiskey to Archie and sits down on Betty’s other side. “The doctor Agent Smith wants you to make an appointment with?”

Archie frowns. “You haven’t made an appointment with Dr. Burble yet?”

“I don’t like, _have_ to,” she mutters.

“Betty.” Archie sips his drink as he narrows his eyes at her. “I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to.”

“I can do it,” Veronica offers. “If you don’t feel like calling.”

“It’s not a big deal, I just haven’t done it yet.” Betty slouches down, leaning her head against the back of the couch.

She’s rescued from further interrogation by the buzzer. Veronica sets her glass of wine down on the counter and rushes over to the box by the door, and pushes the button down. “Yes?”

“Mr. Jones is here, Ms. Lodge.”

“Thank you Smithers, send him up.”

Veronica waits in the little foyer until someone knocks on the door. “What’s the password?” she shouts.

“Your burgers are getting cold!” Betty can practically hear Jughead rolling his eyes on the other side of the door.

Veronica lets Jughead in, gives him a kiss on the cheek and taking a large carry out bag from his arms so he only has to hold a cardboard container holding four milkshakes. “Our savior.”

He laughs. “My pleasure. Hey, Archie, Betty, what’s up?”

“Hey man.” Archie hops up to go give him one of those handshake/shoulder slap hugs guys do, and Betty shyly follows him.

“Hey Betty.” Jughead gives her an easy smile. “How’s it going?”

“Okay.” She manages to give him a little smile, wondering why she didn’t notice last night how beautiful his eyes are.

“C’mon, we can eat in the kitchen.” Veronica shoulders open the door to the dining room and they all follow her though it to the kitchen.

Betty waits for Archie and Veronica to get everything set up at the island before she sits down, as much as she meant it about wanting Jughead to come over she feels shy all over again at seeing him. He looks the same as last night, wearing his beanie again and a black tee shirt under a denim jacket with a sherpa collar. It’s strange for her to be around a guy her age, a guy who isn’t Archie anyway, someone she doesn’t really know.

There weren’t many boys her own age at The Farm and the ones that were there were so strange she didn’t talk to them much - they were like robots, repeating Edgar’s platitudes and sporting identical haircuts and white tunics. The men and women slept in different rooms at night and had different chores during the day; sex was considered something shamefully human, animalistic, a base urge to be mastered and overcome.

Besides, it’s hard to care about sex when you’re freezing and beaten, locked in the dark, held in the emaciated arms of your older sister as she whispers apologies into your ear.

“Betty?” Archie’s looking at her like he’s said her name more than once.

“Sorry, what?” she asks sheepishly.

“Do you want a burger?” he asks, passing foiled wrapped hamburgers to Jughead and Veronica.

“Um… can I start with fries?” she asks quietly.

“Sure.” Archie hands her a cardboard box and she shakes the fries onto her plate.

“Ketchup?” Jughead asks her.

“Sure,” she murmurs. “Thanks.”

He presses a few little packets into her hand and it shocks her so much she almost pulls away, the feeling of his warm skin against hers. Flustered, she rips one open and focuses on neatly squeezing it onto the side of her plate. She zones out as she starts to eat, reveling in the hot salty crunch of a ketchup dipped fry. It tastes incredible and she has to force herself to go slow so she doesn’t make herself sick. She knows there’s a bad habit forming here, too anxious to eat during the day so she becomes ravenous by dinnertime but she can’t seem to break out of it.

She thinks about Polly to get herself to hold back - the sharp curves of her sister’s hip bones, the cage of her ribs, the hollowness under her cheeks. Betty can’t let herself forget that her sister, her other half, her childhood protector is out there suffering while Betty is being coddled and medicated and dressed and fed like a princess.

“You have interviews today?” Archie asks Jughead.

Jughead nods and swallows a bite of his burger. “Transcribing.”

“For your book?” Betty asks him.

“Mhmm,” he answers vaguely.

“How’s it going?” she asks. “You’re in the researching stage, right?”

Archie stares at Jughead. “Did you tell her about the book?” For some reason there’s an edge to his voice.

“I told her I was writing _a_ book,” Jughead responds.

“What’s going on?” Betty asks.

“Nothing,” Archie and Jughead both say.

Betty looks helplessly at Veronica, who bites her lip and subtly shakes her head. Archie and Jughead are locked into a weird staring contest and something in Betty’s stomach curls up tight, the fries sitting in there like a rock.

“Why don’t you want me to know about your book?” she asks Jughead. 

“I didn’t say that,” he mutters.

“Betty, just drop it,” Archie pleads.

“Drop what?” she asks shakily. “Why is his book some big secret?”

“Arch,” Jughead starts, but Archie cuts him off.

“No. I think we should stop talking about this.”

“Archie!” Betty exclaims. She looks sideways at Jughead but he ducks his head, deferring to Archie.

Veronica lays her hand over Archie’s. “She’s going to find out eventually.”

Archie looks at Betty and all of a sudden she realizes that he isn’t angry, he’s devastated.

She hadn’t thought about it until now, what it would feel like to get his missing best friend back from the cult she left him and their entire life in New York City for. She tries to imagine how she would feel if he was gone for almost two years and then came back to her broken and scarred, afraid of everything and everyone, a ghost of his former self.

She would probably freak the fuck out.

Archie rubs his eyes. “Okay. Whatever. Just…”

“What?” Betty asks softly.

“I got this,” Jughead says, and spins on his stool so he’s facing Betty. “The first thing to know is that I signed this book contract months before I started working at B’s. I hadn’t even met Archie or Veronica when I submitted my proposal.”

“Why does that matter?” 

“Because I don’t want you to think that this is about you. It’s just… it’s just a bad coincidence.”

“What’s a bad coincidence?” she presses.

Jughead fixes her with those eyes and Betty can’t move. “I’m writing a book about people who’ve survived cults.”

It’s like drowning while sitting still and Betty thinks about her mother, what it must have felt like to look up through a sheen of water and realize it would be the last thing she’d ever see. Betty wonders if it hurt this much, like her chest is collapsing.

“Betty.” Archie reaches across the island and uncurls her fingers from her palms. “Are you okay?”

She stares at Jughead. “You’re writing a book about cults?”

He winces. “More or less.”

“And you’re - interviewing survivors?”

“They’ll all be anonymous in the book, of course,” he assures her.

She doesn’t understand what’s happening, she doesn’t - she can’t get it to make sense and everyone is staring at her and oh god, Edgar will kill her if he knows that she’s talking to someone who could expose him, _holy shit_ , this is it, she’ll never be free until he’s caught and she had Polly back, oh god, _Polly_ -

“Betty,” Archie says sharply.

She looks at Jughead, dazed, and gets caught in soft blue eyes. “Am I in it?”

“The book?”

She nods, dizzy, it’s bad enough that Archie and Veronica know about the scars on her back, but the idea of that part of her being documented like that, the idea of talking about what happened -

“No, of course not. Betty, I would never do that to you, I swear!”

His words splinter apart into nonsense before she can hear them over the roaring of the blood in her veins. She can’t deal with this. She just can't do it. If Edgar thinks she talked to a reporter, if he finds out she’s working with the FBI, if he thinks she’s talked to anyone, he’ll make Polly disappear just like their mother and Betty will alone, the only Cooper girl left alive, unless they come after her next.

The thought is unbearable. She can’t handle this anymore. She can’t. 

She wants to give up. Pressing her forehead to the surface of the island, she closes her eyes and tries to stop shaking. Her thoughts spin out and she does the only thing left that she can think of to do.

“Forgive me,” she whispers. “Let all the consequences of my actions be returned to me in the highest form of light. Thank you for blessing me with another opportunity to surrender to the light” -

“Oh, shit,” Jughead says faintly.

“I am not afraid of death, because I can never truly die, to the light I was born and to the light I will return” -

“Betty? Betty, what are you doing?” Veronica asks.

“Give me the grace to accept my divine purpose on Earth,” she prays fervently, only vaguely aware that she’s having a panic attack, reaching wildily for the prayers they used to say at The Farm because fuck it, atheists in foxholes and all that.

“Betty, snap out of it!” Archie shouts, and slams his hands down on the island.

She jumps back, startled out of her spiral, and gives him an accusing glare. “You lied to me!”

“I didn’t _lie_ ” -

“Well you didn’t tell me” -

“Because I knew you’d be upset!”

“Well congratulations, you were right!” she shouts.

“You guys, please calm down,” Veronica begs. 

“I’m calm,” Archie says hotly. “Tell her to calm down!”

“Oh, grow up Archie!” Betty hisses.

“You’re the one who’s freaking out!”

“Because you lied to me!”

“Maybe I should go,” Jughead says conversationally, like he knows they aren’t listening to him.

“I’m trying to protect you!” Archie yells.

“I know that!” she yells back. “It’s exhausting!”

“Well, sorry for caring!” He hops off his stool and throws his arms up, looking absolutely exasperated. “Would you rather I have let the hospital throw you out on the street?”

She stares at him, the cruel reminder that she has no one left in her life but him cutting into her chest like a knife. “Fuck you, Archie.”

“Fuck _me?_ ” Archie shouts. “Seriously, me? The guy who almost failed out second semester junior year because he spent so much time looking for you? Me, the guy who never stopped looking for you even when everyone told me the chances of finding you were next to nothing? I dropped everything and drove for seven fucking hours, stuck in traffic and losing my mind, to get to the hospital to see you when that cop called me!”

“I never asked you to do that!”

“Bullshit you didn’t!” Archie snarls.

“You guys, stop!” Veronica wails. “You love each other, what are you doing?”

“Am I supposed to feel bad for you?” Betty shrieks. “This whole time, you’ve had friends, you’ve been dating a supermodel girlboss who’s so perfect she looks like her entire life is curated by a vision board” -

“I like vision boards,” Veronica says quietly, sounding hurt.

Betty can hardly resist rolling her eyes. Vision boards are for people who read books like The Secret and think they’ve discovered the entirety of the universe. Edgar called people like that spiritual infants, desperate for a hit of divinity but not at all comprehending the actual magic, the power of the universe at their fingertips. “Not to mention she’s bankrolling your entire life” -

“Okay, that’s not fair,” Veronica interjects.

Betty stares at Veronica. “Tell me I’m wrong. Look me in the face and tell me that you don’t live off your parents’ money and investments and that you aren’t supporting Archie.”

Veronica’s eyes blaze. “I work.”

“Because your parents gave you the investment money you needed,” Betty says viciously, waving one hand around the ridiculous penthouse. “You don’t have all this because you own a bar.”

“Yes, okay, you caught me Betty, I am financially privileged. Happy?”

“Betty, stop it, what’s the point of this?” Archie asks, looking seriously irritated.

“The point is, you have no idea what it’s like to go through what I went through. While you were going on vacations and eating in nice restaurants and living the high life I was fighting just to survive, so forgive me if I don’t have a lot of confidence that you know anything about helping me!” Betty is so angry now, sick with guilt and shame and fury, that the words just pour out of her. “You have no idea what he did to me, you have no idea! So you don’t get to act like you know what’s best for me when you have no clue what I’m going through!”

Archie’s face goes red. “You left!” he shouts. “You fucking left me here, and you didn’t come back!”

“I didn’t have a choice!” she screams. “I had to help her. You don’t know what they did to us. You have no idea how lucky you are” -

“You really want to play this game with me, Betty? Because if we’re competing for who’s suffered the most in life you don’t get an automatic win.”

“You have no idea what I’ve suffered,” she bites out.

“Okay, I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and step back for a minute,” Veronica says shakily.

Betty’s face is hot but her hands are freezing, high on adrenaline and dazed by her own outburst. She stumbles back from the island and Jughead hops off his stool to catch her by the elbow before she can fall over.

“I’m taking Betty for a walk,” he announces. “You both need to cool off.”

“Absolutely not!” Archie explodes.

“It’s fine, we’ll just go around the block a few times,” Jughead says calmly. “She’s not on house arrest, right?”

“I don’t want her out there alone,” Archie says, like Betty isn’t even there.

“Oh come on, you know I can handle myself.” Jughead gives Archie a look Betty can’t decipher. “We’ll be fine.”

“Maybe,” Veronica hedges, glancing sideways at Archie. “It might not be a bad idea for you two to take a little break, we’ve all spent the past like, twenty-four hours together.”

Archie works his jaw and looks away. “Fine,” he mutters. “Only around the block. Text me if you aren’t back in fifteen minutes or I’ll come out there.”

Betty sways, that feeling of being trapped humming under her skin, like she’s back in that room, in the dark, and she’ll never get out, and black spots appear in the corners of her vision, but then Jughead spins her by the elbow and all she can see are blue, blue eyes and a lock of dark hair peeking out from under the edge of his beanie.

“Come on, Betty,” he says softly.

She blinks at him, and god, as much as she rails like hell against Archie it still feels good to be told what to do, to be given a path to follow, to have the choice made for her the way it was at The Farm.

 _Do you not believe I know what’s best for you?_ Edgar had asked her once. _That I don’t make these decisions out of love?_

Betty leans into the weight of Jughead’s hand and oh god, she is crazy, she is losing her mind, she can’t go out of the streets with some guy she barely knows when she’s in this much danger, it’s too risky, she’s only really safe when she’s locked inside the penthouse but she has to get out of this room and if Archie and Veronica trust Jughead it must be okay and she really needs to get away from Archie and Veronica before she can die of shame for how she just acted towards the only two people in the world who’ve shown her true, deep kindness and generosity.

It reminds her of something Edgar said to her, after finally letting her out of that room, her body weak and shaking everywhere, hardly able to stand, eyes adjusting to the light: _Dare you bite the hand that feeds you now?_ And Betty had looked at the floor and shook her head and focused on not passing out at the feet of the cruel god towering over her.

She dares to look over at Archie and her stomach drops, he’s leaning over the counter with his hands covering his face, Veronica curled around him so she can rub his shaking shoulders and whisper in his ear. Betty has to look away, seeing Archie like that makes her feel so bad it’s like she’s been scraped out and now she’s hollow inside, raw and bloody, as lost as she was the morning she walked out of the woods.

“Okay,” she whispers, and lets Jughead lead her out of the room.


	9. Survival Instincts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly I had a moment writing this chapter where I was like, I can’t believe how angsty this fic is, which, if you’ve read any of my angsty, hurt/comfort fics in other fandoms is, uh... really saying something lmao.

By the time Jughead gets her downstairs and out the entrance of the Pembrooke Betty’s shaking all over, leaning into him as he props her up against the exterior wall of the building, his body shielding her from everyone on the sidewalk.

“Hey,” he says softly. “It’s okay. We’re just gonna go around the block a few times and calm down, how does that sound?”

“Do you think he hates me?” she asks Jughead tremulously.

“Who, Archie?” He gives her an incredulous look. “Of course not.”

“But I was so - _awful_ ,” she says, sick to her stomach as she remembers how she yelled at Archie, oh god, she was mean to Veronica too.

What is _wrong_ with her?

“They’ll understand.” He doesn’t touch her but one of his hands hovers above her shoulder. “It hasn’t even been a week since you got out, Betty. Give yourself some time.”

She stares at him, how is it possible she’s been here less than a week when it feels like an eternity since she kissed her sister’s sunken cheek and quietly slipped out of the women’s sleeping quarters, a stolen razor blade tucked into her palm?

“Look,” he continues. “I don’t know what you’re feeling right now but I’ve spent enough time talking to people who’ve been through this to know it’s normal to be struggling. Hell Betty, I’ve met people who were so shell shocked coming back into the real world that they didn’t even _talk_ for a while. It probably doesn’t seem like it to you but the fact you were able to have an argument like that is a really good sign.”

“Why?” she asks, baffled.

“Because you’re angry.” He ducks his head a little so they’re eye level. “And if you’re angry, that means you’re still fighting. You haven’t given up.”

She blinks tears out of her eyes. “Jughead?”

“Hmm?”

She bites the inside of her cheek hard so she doesn’t cry. “Sometimes I don’t want to fight anymore.”

“I understand. That doesn’t change the fact that you’re a fighter.” His voice is low and gentle. “You’re hard wired to survive, Betty.”

Betty tries to swallow the lump in her throat, thinking of Polly’s sharp elbows and knees, her pale skin, her limp hair. “I left my sister there.”

His forehead wrinkles. “I’m sorry.”

“She wouldn’t come with me. I spent over a year and… god, it’s September, right?” She’s hit by an unexpected wave of terror by the realization that she doesn’t even know what the date is, she’s that helpless.

“That’s right,” he says quickly. 

“Fuck.” She exhales and shuts her eyes for a second, fighting the crash that comes after a panic attack has peaked. “I’m sorry, I’m just… everything is so fucked up right now. I don’t know. I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”

“Do you think maybe you could just be here right now and not torture yourself over what you don’t know?” he suggests.

“I don’t know.” She rubs her eyes, there’s a part of her that wants to lie down right here on the sidewalk and go to sleep. “Sorry, there’s just a lot going on in my head right now I guess.”

“You know what’s great for clearing your mind? A walk.” He holds his elbow out to her. “May I have the honor?”

She fights the instinct to collapse onto the sidewalk and forces herself to loop her arm around his. “Okay.”

“Okay!” he says triumphantly, like he’s proud of her or something, and gently pulls her away from the building.

“You know, he talked about you a lot before,” Jughead says casually as they begin to walk in the direction Veronica took Betty yesterday. “Archie.”

“Really?”

“I thought you were his sister at first. It was always little things, like, Betty would love this song, or, Betty used to do that when we were kids, or, this one time me and Betty whatever. Stuff like that. Veronica was the one that actually told me about… what happened to you.”

She sighs, leaning into him as they walk down the block. “Are you trying to make a particular point here?”

“He loves you,” Jughead says simply. “He isn’t going to bail on you because you’re struggling right now.”

Betty shrugs, uncomfortable, it’s weird to hear someone she doesn’t even really know tell her how much Archie cares about her. “Okay.”

“If I tell you something will you promise not to tell him and Veronica I said this?”

She glances sideways at him, surprised. “Okay.”

“Veronica and I were drinking this one night after we closed at B’s and she… she said that she loved Archie and she knew he loved her back, but that she would never - she would never have all of him. Because of you.”

Betty blinks rapidly, wondering if she’s supposed to be hurt. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Look, I only met Archie this past spring but it’s pretty clear that he never stopped loving you, Betty. You guys were best friends, right? And me and Veronica, hell, most of his friends, I think everyone except Josie - we didn’t know you, before. We didn’t know what he was really going through when you didn’t come back. How much it… affected him. I think loving someone like that, it… there’s always been this piece of him he’s never let any of us see. It’s hard to explain, sometimes Archie goes somewhere, like in his head, and we can’t really get to him. Like he’s not really with us. I think that’s what Veronica meant.”

They pass the diner Veronica pointed out to her yesterday and turn the corner. Betty glances inside, watching people drinking coffee and eating pancakes for dinner, and feels an awful ache in her chest. What she wouldn’t give to be one of them, an anonymous girl in a city of anonymous people, sitting in a booth with her friends like a normal person her age.

“He grew up next door to me,” Betty says softly. “We were pretty much raised together.”

“You were close,” he surmises.

Betty nods, lips pressed together. It still hurts sometimes, to talk about the things she’s lost, the shattered childhood memories she doesn’t like to look at too hard because the edges are still sharp enough to cut.

“He’s been my best friend my whole life.” She catalogues her environment as they walk down the street, passing a cupcake shop, a shoe store, another bodega. “He’s my… he’s the only real family I have left other than…”

Other than Polly. Beautiful, fragile, Polly, her big sister that Betty left behind. Who Betty may never see again.

She went to The Farm to save Polly but in the end she was barely able to to save herself. Major sister fail. Her mother would never forgive her for this if she was alive, Betty thinks, abandoning Polly like that.

 _I was trying to help, Mom_ , she tells her mother in her head. _Which was more than you ever did._

“I’m sorry about your sister,” he says quietly, seriously, like he really means it.

“Thanks,” she barely manages to get out.

“Older or younger?”

“Older.”

He nods.”Mine’s younger.”

“You have a sister?” For some reason it endears him to her a little more, that they have another thing in common, something he might understand.

“Yeah, J.B. She’s a pain in the ass but I love that little punk more than anyone,” he says fondly.

“Does she live here?”

“Ohio,” he answers shortly. “With my mom.”

She can tell by his tone he doesn’t want to talk about it so she just nods, glancing in the window of a bakery displaying cinnamon rolls the size of her face. Next to her Jughead sighs, his shoulder brushing up against hers for a moment.

“You ever fight?” he asks her. “You and your sister?”

Betty lets out a choked laugh. “Sure. When we were kids we fought over everything. Hair bows, clothes, who got to pick the movie, which one of us our parents loved more, you know. Sibling stuff.”

“But you always made up, right?”

“Well yeah,” she replies, not having any idea where he’s going with this. “We were sisters.”

“That’s what I mean, Betty. With you and Archie.”

“Huh?” she asks, baffled.

“You and him have been friends since you were little kids. The way he talks about it you guys…”

“What?” she asks, curious. What the hell did Archie really tell him about her?

“It just sounded like you both had it kinda rough growing up.”

“That’s one way to put it,” she murmurs. By senior year Fred Andrews had died in a hit and run, her father was in prison, her sister had joined The Farm, and their entire town treated Betty and her mother like pariahs for what her father did.

“It seems like you guys are pretty bonded,” he offers.

“Yeah,” she agrees. 

“So I think after everything you guys have been through, your relationship can handle a rough patch.”

“I guess we’ll find out,” she jokes weakly.

“Betty, trust me, he’s just happy you’re safe and you’re back home with him. Okay? No one expects you to… be okay right now.”

“What if I’m never okay again?” she whispers, deliberately looking in the window of an antique furniture store instead of him.

“You will be,” he says confidently. “It’ll take time, and work, and it won’t be easy but… you were strong enough to survive it, Betty. You’ll heal.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because that’s what humans do. All you have to do is stay on the ride and let it happen.”

She nods, finding his cheerful confidence in her a bit ridiculous but too sweet to make fun of. It’s not his fault, he can’t possibly understand what she’s dealing with. It doesn’t matter who he’s talked to, she still doesn’t believe for a second that he could really understand the things she’s been through, the things she’s seen, it’s one thing to hear about it but he can’t _know_ , not really.

It’s a nice idea though. That if she just sticks it out eventually she’ll get better, won’t constantly feel an invisible enemy at her back or the ache of Polly's absence in her bones or the rush of panic that hits her periodically throughout the day anymore.

They make it all the way back to the Pembrooke and Jughead glances at her. “ Okay, I think we have time to get one more lap in, what do you say?”

Facing the consequences of her actions or putting it off for another few minutes? It’s a no brainer. She knows she’s going to have to go back in soon but she’d still rather put it off. There’s a sliver of panic she hasn’t managed to shake, that Archie really will be mad, that Veronica will want her out, that he’ll punish her for behaving like that.

“I could do another one,” she says softly. “Not exactly itching to go back in.”

“Okay,” he says calmly. “Sounds good to me.”

They don’t really talk on their second loop around the block but it’s okay because just being next to him, her arm curled around his, is enough for her to feel secure. She’s so rusty at making conversation anyway that this is easier, to walk next to him and let their bodies talk for them. He’s alert, eyes always scanning back and forth even though his posture is relaxed, although there’s a kinetic quality to it, like he could snap into explosive action in a second if he had to.

It makes her wonder again, what he meant when he told Archie he could take care of himself. 

It hits her all over again that she doesn’t even know Jughead, not really, which makes her hackles go up a little but then again Archie trusts him and given how insanely overprotective Archie is of her Betty figures she must be safe enough.

When they make it back around to the Pembrooke Jughead follows her inside, holding one hand up to Smithers as they walk through the lobby. “You don’t have to go up with me,” she tells him.

“Pretty sure I do,” Jughead replies, smacking the _up_ button with his hand. “Can you imagine what Archie would do if he found out I let you ride the elevator by yourself?”

Betty knows he’s just joking but instead of finding it funny it makes her feel guilty. “I’m sorry,” she apologizes. “I know having to take me anywhere is kind of a pain.”

“Whoa, hey, Betty.” The elevator door dings open and he gestures for her to go in first, one hand brushing her shoulder as he walks in behind her and hits the button for Veronica’s floor. “That’s only because of _very_ special circumstances you’re in that aren’t your fault. You shouldn’t feel bad about that.”

“Sorry if I don’t enjoy being constantly infantilized,” she snaps as the elevator begins to rise.

He just nods, apparently endlessly patient, at least when it comes to her. “I get why that would be really frustrating.”

“I’m sorry,” she sighs. “I keep… I feel like you guys are being like, ridiculously nice to me even though you and Veronica barely know me, and I keep taking shit out on you.”

“Everyone has their defense mechanisms,” he says. “Besides, it really is a good thing you’re willing to engage this much, you don’t have to apologize. If you can do that it means you feel safe enough with us to express your feelings.”

“Did you minor in psychology?” she asks suspiciously as the elevator stops and the doors slide open.

He laughs as he follows her out into the hallway. “No, but I’m neck deep in research on how long term trauma affects survivors, so I may have talked to a fair share of psychologists.”

And there it is again, the reminder that she isn’t some precious princess locked in a tower, she’s a cult survivor. _Survivor._

Betty isn’t sure about how she feels about thinking of herself that way. She doesn’t feel like she survived, she feels like she’s still fighting the same fight she’s been fighting for almost two years: rescue Polly.

And in her quest to save her sister Betty ending up having to fight against, well, pretty much everything. Edgar’s rules and Polly’s bones shining through her milk white skin and the constant gnawing hunger and the dark, cold room where she thought she would die. She knew Edgar never really believed her when she said she wanted to give everything in her old life up for Polly, The Farm, that she’d seen The Light. He would never let her in, not all the way, but he made damn sure to let her try to prove herself and when he couldn’t get her to break he just kept going, until Betty barely knew who she was anymore, her identity always on the verge of falling apart, reality shimmering a little at the edges of her vision.

Something Betty didn’t know, before it happened to her: if you’re in the dark, the _real_ dark, no light source, for a few hours or longer, you start to hallucinate. 

None of those things killed her, not technically, but a part of her died there, on that land, in that room, lying on that cot with her sister slowly shrinking next to her.

Betty’s heard that when people drown there’s a moment, after they’ve stopped fighting and opened their mouth and the water rushed inside, where they feel at peace, and death is not so much of a battle anymore but a violent seduction, down into dark depths never to return. 

She wonders if it’s true, if her mother was calm when she died, unafraid, or if it’s bullshit designed to make people like her feel better, so she doesn’t have to imagine her mother thrashing in a shallow pool of water, her body held down, lungs burning, knowing she was going to die, until she went unconscious and there was no knowing anymore, not ever. Just a body, an inconvenience, something to be covered up and forgotten.

“Betty? You okay?” 

With a jolt she realizes they’re standing in front of Archie and Veronica’s apartment. “Yeah,” she mumbles, just as Archie swings the door open.

“Hey.” Archie looks quickly between the two of them and then back to Betty, scanning her like he’s looking for signs of damage. “You okay?”

“Oh come on Andrews, look at her.” To her relief Jughead answers for her. “She’s clearly in the same condition she left in.”

“Whatever.” Archie shoots him an annoyed glance. “You at B’s tomorrow tonight?”

“Yeah, I’m on all weekend,” Jughead replies, while Betty stands there, silent, used to the way they all have conversations around her.

“Alright.” Archie runs a hand through his hair. “Thanks for, you know.”

“Sure.” Jughead looks sideways at her. “I’ll see you later Betty, okay?”

She breathes through a rush of dread at him leaving, the buffer between her and Archie gone. “Okay.”

“Night,” Archie mutters.

“Night, guys.” Jughead doesn’t hug her goodbye or anything but he gives her a crooked smile before he leaves and heads down the hallway back towards the elevator.

“You coming in?” Archie is tense everywhere, his jaw and his crossed arms and his voice.

Betty bows her head and walks across the threshold, flinching when Archie reaches around her to close and lock the door. He doesn’t look at her as he turns and walks to the living room where Veronica is laying on the couch with her eyes shut, a glass of wine in one hand.

“How was your walk?” he asks Betty stiffly.

She stares at him. She actually, literally does not know what to say back. _How was her walk?_ Why the hell should he care, after the things she said to him and Veronica? 

What could she possibly say to make up for what she did, anyway?

There are consequences for losing her temper, for letting her words come freely. 

Anger, Edgar told her many times, was a low vibrational emotion. She used to think he lorded that over her, like she didn’t have a reason to be angry, like she was just some silly girl with a temper, control issues, with possibly a touch of narcissism. She needed help, he told her, she would never be able to ascend along with her sister if she didn’t learn how to process her feelings, how to rise above them.

When it came down to it he always used Polly against her. He wasn’t stupid, he understand Polly was Betty’s weakness, the reason she put up with the abuse and the rigid schedule and the menial, mindless labor and the humiliating sessions with him that usually ended with her nails buried in her palms.

He could use Polly to get Betty to do anything.

“Betty.” Archie waves a hand in her direction, _anyone home?_

And because Betty is still that girl she was before The Farm in some ways, the girl who never learned how to control herself, her emotions a dark storm always on the horizon, she bursts into tears.

“Betty!” He starts to reach for her but she stumbles back instinctively, arms coming close around her face.

“I’m sorry!” she sobs. “I’m so sorry, Arch, I should’ve never said those things to you and, and Veronica” -

His eyes go wide. “Jesus, Betty” -

“Please don’t make me leave,” she chokes out. “I’m sorry, I’ll be good, Veronica I’m so sorry, I know you probably hate me but please don’t kick me out, I will literally beg if you ask me to” -

“Oh my god, Betty. Jesus Christ,” Veronica echoes Archie as she opens her eyes and sits up, leaning over the back of the couch without spilling a drop of wine. “It’s fine. You had a moment, whatever. Of course we wouldn’t kick you out, we’re not monsters. Archiekins, I’m going to take a bath and let you two talk it out. Night, Betty.”

Veronica leaves with her wine, clearly at the point where she either can’t or won’t deal with another one of Betty’s breakdowns and Betty doesn’t blame her one bit; Veronica didn’t sign up for this. It isn’t fair to her, having to handle a crazy girl from Archie’s past making a mess of her perfect life.

Betty stands at the edge of the living room, a few feet from Archie, tears running down her face as her chest heaves with desperate sobs. He moves closer to her, arms outstretched, and she flinches, thinking of that room, getting dragged in there and tossed onto the floor and _Archie wouldn’t do that,_ she argues with herself, but, but, but -

_None of those people out there, the ones from your old life, they don’t love you Betty. Not really. How could they? They don’t actually know you. You don’t even know you._

He’d said it so gently too, like, oh you poor, poor, girl, you think those people care about you? _Really? You willing to bet on that?_ Like he’d known something she didn’t.

She knew he was trying to fuck with her, separate her from her old life, convince her she needed The Farm, that no one would love her but them. 

But.

Sometimes she thinks what Edgar did to her worked. She doesn’t trust anyone in the outside world anymore, not even her oldest friend, the boy who proposed to her at eight, who held her in his bed every night the summer after her dad went to prison, pulled back her hair for her the first time she threw up after getting drunk.

Her breath goes choppy, all panicked inhales as she realizes she isn’t going to be able to dodge Archie and she’s just so tired of fighting, she feels like she’s been fighting her whole life and honestly, what was even the point if it led her to here? No family, no life, everything she ever really loved lost forever, except for Archie.

It makes the breath rush out of her and Archie is there to catch her when she sways, almost tipping over, hysterical little cries coming out of her as she squirms in his arms like a cat he’s trying to hold. He wins of course, because he’s Archie and she’s a dead girl walking, a ghost, a shell.

Big hands come around the sides of her face, fingers wrapping around the back of her head and something about it makes her go boneless, hyperventilating as she gives into him. She knows this, deep in her bones and something inside of her lets go, something she forgot about or thought she lost - muscle memory.

Edgar lied and lied to her and even though she knew they were lies at some point she didn’t believe anything anymore, not even her own narratives about her life and that was one of the scariest parts, the feeling that she was being slowly erased, but this is something he could never take from her.

She knows his touch when she feels it, a different kind of knowing than in her mind, a deeper knowing than a thought. It’s a feeling kind of knowing, like when people say trust your gut, because with her head held between familiar hands she knows, deep in her bones, beyond a doubt, that she is safe.

Beloved.

A feeling she had forgotten.

“Look at me,” Archie demands. “Come on, Betty. It’s just you and me. Look at me and take a breath.”

She blinks and more tears roll down her face so she blinks again and looks into Archie’s eyes, and -

And she’s five and they’re running through the sprinkler together -

And then she’s eight and Mary Andrews is putting a band-aid on her scraped knee while Archie holds her hand -

She’s twelve and won’t drink milkshakes when they go to Pop’s even though they’re her favorite because her mother said she had to go on a diet so puberty doesn’t ruin her weight -

She’s fourteen and she’s cheering for him in her Vixens uniform at his first high school football game -

She’s sixteen and it’s summer and she’s sleeping in his bed, his arms around her -

She’s eighteen and sitting next to him on a Greyhound, sharing a pair of earbuds so they can listen to the playlist he made for them, leaving their old life behind -

She keels over, right into his chest, some high pitched painful noise from deep inside tearing out of her. His arms wrap around her, holding her to his chest and Betty makes a sound like a wounded animal, clutching onto his shirt and it smells like Archie, which makes her cry harder.

“I’ve got you,” he whispers. “I’m here, I’m here.”

She sobs, trying to fold into him and Archie just scoops her up, cradling her in his arms. He carries her down the hallway, letting her cry into his shoulder as he opens the door to the guest room and takes her over to the bed. He gets one knee up on the mattress and carefully lies her down, pulling his arm out from under her so he can get her shoes off for her. Betty curls into a ball, blinding reaching out for him, her hand on his back so she doesn’t lose him again, and cries into the fancy duvet cover.

Archie kicks off his sneakers and climbs up all the way onto the bed, stretching out on his back next to her, one arm lifting up. “C’mere.”

She crawls under his arm and presses up against his side, head on his chest as he wraps his arm around her. Now that she’s started she can’t stop crying but it’s the good kind, a release, the pressure in her chest decreasing. He cups one of his hands over the back of her head and she shudders, she feels contained but in a safe way, not trapped but protected. His fingers stroke over her hair, letting her cry into his shirt for a while until she starts to lose steam, feeling like she really might fall asleep this time.

“Hey,” Archie says softly. 

She sniffs, snuggling closer to him. “I’m so tired.”

“Yeah, I know. I need to tell you something though, can you listen for a minute?”

She sighs, completely wrung out. “M’kay.”

“I’d never kick you out, okay? And Veronica wouldn’t either. There’s nothing you could do, ever, that would make us do that.”

Tears slide out of the corners of her eyes. “Promise?”

“Betty, I swear on my dad’s grave, you will always have a place to live with us.”

She turns her face up to him with wide eyes, the back of her head tilting against his shoulder, stunned. “Okay.”

He bends down and kisses her forehead. “Okay.”

She chews on her lip for a moment. “Archie?”

“Hmm?”

“If I ask you something, will you, it’s stupid so just, please don’t make fun of me, okay?”

“Betty.” He frowns as he resumes running his fingers through her hair. “I’d never do that.”

“Okay. Um...” She has to close her eyes for a moment, it’s humiliating, asking this, but at the same time, there’s this tiny seed of doubt from Edgar that makes her need to know, just to be sure. 

“Betty, c’mon, it’s me, you can ask me anything.”

“I know. I just, um. You’d never hurt me, right?” she asks in a small voice, staring off towards the window because she’s too afraid to look at him.

Archie goes very still under her. “What do you mean?”

“Like, if I made you mad or said something I shouldn’t, you wouldn’t like.” She starts to shiver a little. “You wouldn’t like, hurt me, right?”

“Betty.” He sounds like he’s going to cry. “That's right, I would never hurt you.”

“Okay,” she whispers.

“You - you know that, right?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she murmurs.

His fingers slide through her hair. “Okay.”

Her eyes start to drift shut as she rolls her head back onto his chest, soothed by the rise and fall of his breath. “Okay.


	10. Waiting for Grace

Betty wakes up disoriented, her body weighed down under something heavy and soft. She blinks and snuggles against a pillow - a pillow - as she realizes she slept through the night in the bed for the first time. Last night comes back to her slowly in a wave of shame, at all of it: losing her temper in front of Archie, Veronica and Jughead, barely keeping it together in front of Jughead when he took her on a walk, falling apart in front of Archie.

He left her in her street clothes from last night; Betty crawls out of bed with a throbbing headache and peels everything off, carries the bundle of clothes into the bathroom and stuffs them into the hamper. She takes a quick shower, towels off when she gets out and brushes her hair. It’s grown a lot, she notes vaguely, she was overdue for a trim when she went to The Farm and now it’s past her shoulders.

She looks like how Polly did in high school, she realizes, minus the headband and plump cheeks, and she’s punched by the memory so hard that she has to lean over the sink, gasping at the mental picture of Polly at sixteen - forever sweet, Daddy’s little girl, princess pink and bows in her hair, the original girl next door who secretly fucked half the football team.

“Get it together,” Betty whispers to herself, and goes back to the bedroom.

She changes into another combination of the same outfit she’s been wearing since she got here, a new tee shirt/new leggings/ her old Vixens hoodie, and sits on the bed. The idea of facing Archie and Veronica after last night (especially Veronica, who Betty doesn’t know as well and therefore is more unpredictable) is terrifying and so she sits there, staring at the wall, praying for that reassurance that’s supposed to come with the morning, when the pain of yesterday melts away with the rising sun, but all she feels is a heavy pit in her stomach.

She trudges back to the bathroom and takes an antidepressant, wondering when they’ll start working, although to be fair she isn’t sure what she went through could be solved by anything, even a pill. Or maybe they take more than a few days to kick in, she doesn’t know, she hasn’t talked to Ms. Burble since that day in the hospital. The only medications Betty took before The Farm were her birth control and the Adderall her mother used to make her swallow each morning and that’s what she’s used to, she supposes, that chemical rush of a stimulant, everything coming into sharper focus and giving her endless energy.

She looks at herself in the mirror; she looks like she’s been crying - puffy eyes, chapped lips, her skin creased from the pillowcase. Betty wonders if she should put concealer on to cover the blotched skin around her eyes and decides she doesn’t have the energy to care. It’s not like it matters. There’s no one she needs to look pretty for, anyway.

She doesn’t know what to do next and she doesn’t really want to leave her room before she has to so she ends up pacing back and forth in front of the bed, working herself into an anxious mess, thinking about how the day ahead of her feels like an eternity. Another day of having no real purpose, nothing to do except wait for news about Polly. In some ways that’s like The Farm, the monotony, the repetition, everything in her life centered around her sister.

Someone knocks on her door and Betty freezes, hands curling into fists.

“Betty? Are you up?”

It’s Veronica.

“Yeah?” Betty calls out tentatively.

“Come say bye to Archie, he’s going to work.”

Betty rushes to the door and opens it. “What?”

“He has to go to work,” Veronica says impatiently, dressed for the day in a rust colored sweater and skinny jeans. “Go on, go say goodbye.”

Betty lets Veronica nudge her down the hall so she can catch Archie at the door, wearing jeans and a hoodie, huge backpack on and headphones around his neck, thermos in one hand. 

“Hey.” Archie walks over and gives Betty a quick hug. “I’ve gotta go into The Center today. I’m sorry, I’ve missed like half the week, but I’ll be back by dinner, okay?”

Betty can barely look at him, her throat tightening. “You’re leaving?”

“He has to go to work,” Veronica answers for Archie patiently. “I’m staying with you today, and then after Archie gets back I’m going into B’s for a few hours.”

Betty looks at Archie desperately but he just sighs and kisses her forehead. “I’m sorry but I have to go, okay? You’ll be fine with Veronica.”

_No I won’t,_ she wants to protest, not after last night. She presses her lips together and nods, curling into herself.

“Say goodbye, Betty,” Veronica tells her.

“Goodbye,” Betty whispers obediently.

“Bye, Archiekins.” Veronica gives him a quick peck on the lips and smooths her hand over his sweatshirt. “Have a good day.”

“Thanks.” He kisses Veronica back. “Love you.”

She gives him a soft smile that makes Betty feel like a voyeur. “Love you too.”

“You too, Betty,” he says.

She blinks at him. There’s something about this whole scene that feels like they’re playing make believe, like they’re repeating something, a simulation of a scene that already happened, a recreation of a memory.

_Standing at the front door, hugging her father goodbye in the mornings before school. Her mother, always impatient, keys in hand, say goodbye, Betty._

“Betty,” Veronica prompts.

“Yeah,” she says faintly. “You too.”

Archie leaves with a smile, pulling the door firmly behind him, and Betty is left alone with Veronica. The girl who opened her home to her, the girl who’s been nothing but nice and for her troubles Betty accused her of being a spoiled trust fund kid who’s never suffered a day in her life. Well, the trust fund kid part might be right but still, Betty didn’t need to point it out like that, like it was a character flaw, like it was Veronica’s fault she was born wealthy.

Betty tries to retreat back down the hallway so she can hide in the guest room but Veronica catches her by the wrist and Betty can’t breathe, remembering the hands that picked her up and threw her into that dark room, but Veronica only squeezes her arm lightly and releases her. 

“Go put some shoes on,” Veronica instructs. “We’re going out for breakfast.”

Betty stares dumbly at her. “What?”

“You were right, we’re babying you too much. You’re an adult, keeping you locked up here twenty-four seven would make anyone go crazy.” Veronica slips her feet into a pair of chocolate brown suede ankle boots. “Go on, Andre will drive us.”

“Okay.” Betty walks back to her room because she doesn’t really have a choice, Veronica is still in charge.

Her shoes have been arranged on a rack against the wall across from her bed, Betty grabs a pair black quilted slip on sneakers and jams her feet into them, and in an uncharacteristic last minute decision ducks into the bathroom to put on concealer and a little mascara before meeting Veronica back in the foyer. Veronica glances at her as she picks up a Prada handbag, looking confused.

“Where’s your stuff?” she asks Betty.

“I don’t…” Betty shrugs helplessly, she doesn’t know what Veronica’s talking about. “I don’t have any stuff.”

“What about your phone? And your wallet?”

“The Farm took them upon arrival,” Betty explains tightly. “The only thing I was able to get back was my license.”

“No, I mean your new phone,” Veronica says impatiently.

“Oh. I didn’t know I was supposed to bring it.” After almost two years without one she’s gotten used to not having a phone, Betty doesn’t automatically grab it when she leaves the way she used to back in college.

“Well, it’s not a bad idea to carry it, just for emergencies. I put me and Archie in your contacts already but if we got separated or something, it’s just a good idea to have it on you whenever you leave the apartment. You know, for the gps and all.”

Betty stands there dumbly as she and Veronica both sit in the realization that Veronica just implied Betty should carry her phone with her on the off chance she gets kidnapped and they need to use her phone to track her.

“You’re right,” Betty mumbles. “Hang on.”

She gets her phone from the nightstand in the guest room, sticks it into the side pocket of her grey leggings and goes back out again, feeling exhausted already, and this time Veronica deems her acceptable. When they go down to the lobby her driver is waiting right outside the doors talking about the Mets with the doorman. He glides in front of them to open the door to the backseat of the shiny black car they picked her up from the hospital in, and Betty follows Veronica into the backseat.

“There’s this place on the Upper East side that I absolutely adore,” Veronica gushes as they buckle up. “You’ll love it, it’s this sweet little cafe, very private. The girls and I do brunch there sometimes.”

“The Upper East side was never my scene,” Betty murmurs as the car pulls away from the curb.

“Well.” Veronica fiddles with the strap of her bag. “Now you get to experience a different part of Manhattan!”

The stuffy, upper crust part, Betty thinks, and then she feels bad. Veronica’s trying to be nice, she’s trying to treat Betty like a companion and not a chore, a kid she’s stuck babysitting, and Betty’s judging her for what neighborhoods she frequents. Betty looks out the window and rubs her forehead with the heel of her hand, wishing she’d taken one of those pills for anxiety before they left. 

She watches New York flit past her window as they make the crawl across the city to the East side. Andre pulls the car up right outside the cafe, all brick exterior and ivy,. Andre helps them out of the car and stands on the sidewalk like a bodyguard as Betty follows Veronica down a small flight of steps that end at a frosted glass door. Inside everything is very white - the walls, the floors, the linens, and it would make Betty recoil but the wood is dark, the upholstery is pale blue, and there are beautiful photographs of the walls (flowers close up, Georgia O’Keefe style) to mitigate all the whiteness she associates with The Farm.

The hostess, a towering blonde dressed in a snowy white shift dress that looks just like a model Betty saw a few years ago in a perfume ad for Dior, nods in a deferential sort of way to Veronica and leads them to a corner table that’s tucked into an alcove, quiet and private.

“Thanks, Tatianna.” Veronica slips some cash into the hostess’s hand so quickly Betty almost misses it. 

Betty sits facing the restaurant, back against the white wall, so she can see everything, and Veronica doesn’t seem to mind because she just unfolds her napkin and opens her menu.

“The eggs here are fantastic,” Veronica advises. “And the pancakes. Honestly, you can’t go wrong, Katy loves their waffles.”

“Can I get some coffee, actually?” Betty asks.

“Oh, they know to bring it,” Veronica says casually. “I’m thinking of getting an omelet, what are you in the mood for?”

“Um, I don’t know.” Eggs were one of the few things they usually had in abundance at The Farm, they prayed to the chickens and gave thanks for the sustenance their eggs gave them. Eggs are safe, eggs are allowed. Although she doubts the eggs here are treated with the same kind of reverence as the ones at The Farm.

It was one of the few things Betty had liked about being there, the fresh food, until Edgar started rationing everything, insisted they all needed to be purified, clear their bodies so they’d be prepared to ascend. They’d been starving at the end, completely malnourished, delirious from the hunger. Betty can still feel it - the way her stomach was so empty it felt twisted inside out, the way her eyes couldn’t focus, the rush she’d get standing up, the lightheadedness. The bone grinding exhaustion. How every moment became a fight against laying down in the meadow, covering herself in wildflowers and letting the earth take her the way the water had taken her mother.

In the beginning though, it hadn’t been so bad. Milk had never tasted so rich, berries exploded on her tongue, warm from the sun, fresh herbs were sprinkled over scrambled eggs and salads and zucchini pasta. It had been nice even, when she’d been living on dry cereal and pizza and frozen yogurt back at school, to eat food that tasted, well, like real food, back when the gardens were plentiful. They had apple trees, blueberry and raspberry bushes, vegetable plots full of arugula and spinach and kale and lettuce, carrots and potatoes and broccoli. 

It had been beautiful, really. Betty had to remind herself sometimes that it was just for show, a carefully curated presentation of a hippie utopia and the capitalist’s Marxist nightmare: a place where your food comes from the earth, not a store, where children run naked in fields covered in dirt and leaves as they did in the garden of Eden, where clothes were merely functional, where your neighbors were brothers and sisters woven together by shared meals and prayer circles and of course, worship of their creator, a man who shined gold, their king.

The devil in disguise.

“Betty?” Veronica is giving her a concerned look. “Any ideas?”

“Yeah, eggs might be good,” Betty says hesitantly. This is only her second meal in public, better to stick to something familiar, something she won’t have a meltdown over.

Sure enough, a minute later a teenage boy with tawny skin that gleams against the crisp white button down of his uniform comes to their table carrying a carafe of coffee and fresh cream. He neatly pours a cup for each of them and sets the carafe down in the center of the table, the cream next to it.

“Your coffee, Miss Lodge.” 

“Thank you Emilio. Betty, are you ready to order?”

“Um... sure, do you want to go first?”

“Sure. My regular and a side of strawberries.” Veronica hands her menu to the waiter with a smile. “Betty?”

“Okay, um, I’ll do an egg white garden omelette please.”

He takes her menu from her, nods his head without writing anything down, and hurries off.

Betty pours a bit of cream into her cup and stirs it around with the little silver spoon resting on her saucer, takes a sip, and sighs. “This is great,” she murmurs, cupping the mug in her hands.

Veronica lets out a little laugh, like a tinkling bell. “Welcome back to the land of civilization, where every human vice is at your fingertips.”

Betty takes another sip of coffee. “I wasn’t much for vices before, anyway. But coffee is like…”

“A human right,” Veronica fills in emphatically.

Betty can’t help herself, she laughs. “I don’t know about that, but it’s nice to have the option.”

“Look.” Veronica tears open two packets of brown sugar and stirs them into her coffee. “Archie and I talked, and we’re going to try and back off about the food stuff. We get that things were… different there, and of course it’ll take your body some time to adjust. He’s just worried about you, he, um… mentioned some things,” Veronica says delicately.

Betty slouches a little, she really isn’t in the mood to talk about all her food issues before she’s even finished her first cup of coffee. “Thanks. I’m… I’m sorry, about last night” -

“Betty, it’s fine.” Veronica reaches up and runs manicured fingers through her hair. “You already apologized.”

“I just feel bad,” she whispers. “You’ve been really nice and I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate it.”

“Oh, well, thank you, but I… I can’t imagine what you went through, I really can’t. And it’s only Friday, so I think you’re allowed a grace period. I love Archie, and Archie loves you, and I’m just glad that I can help, really.”

Betty’s gratitude is overwhelming but Veronica seems to understand, she pats Betty’s hand and pretends to ignore that Betty’s crying a little bit. She opens her phone and scrolls through the news to give her a distraction, angling it towards Betty and giving context when she doesn’t understand something. 

The arrival of their food is a welcome distraction, Betty busies herself with sprinkling salt over her omelette and watching Veronica pour syrup over her buckwheat pancakes. Betty cuts off a small bite of her omelette, thinking about the prayer they would say at The Farm, how they blessed everything they put in their bodies, and she knows she isn’t there anymore and it doesn’t matter, but there’s a part of her that misses the ritual of it all. It took her time to get used to being that controlled, her freedom at NYU had been so hard won and she hadn’t wanted to give it up but that’s what it was like at The Farm, you were expected to fall in line for the good of all. And she’d grown used to it, the way her days were so neatly segmented, she knew what she was supposed to be doing every hour that she was awake, because she didn’t have any choices anyway, the cost of The Farm was free will and she payed it, if it meant she had a chance of getting Polly out she would have payed anything.

And now here she is, free, eating twenty-five dollar eggs on the Upper East side with an heiress who’s in love with her best friend and Polly is probably dead or close to it, because Betty couldn't save her. In the end she could barely save herself. She could’ve stayed, and maybe if she’d been a better sister she would have. But at that point staying meant death and Betty couldn’t accept that. She would have died for her sister if it would have saved Polly, but Betty wasn’t going to die for Edgar. 

But Polly might, and no matter what Betty did she couldn’t convince Polly to make a different choice.

_It’s okay,_ Polly had told her, lips pressed to Betty’s ear, her frail arms holding Betty to her. _It’s okay, Betty._

“Betty.” Veronica’s staring at her. “Are you okay?”

_Surrender_ , Edgar whispers in her ear. _You can accept or resist, but only one will set you free. Surrender, Betty. Be still, and wait for grace._

“Sorry. Yeah.” Betty blinks rapidly and points to her omelette with her fork. “This is really good.”

“Good.” Veronica looks pacified. “So, we’ve got hours until Archie will be back. Is there anything you want to do? We could have a girls day!”

“Um…” Veronica’s enthusiasm is a little overwhelming. “Actually, um… I haven’t had my hair cut in like, two years, so maybe, do you think…”

“Oh my god, of course!” Veronica exclaims, and whips out her phone. “I will text my stylist right now.”

“Oh, you don’t have to” -

“Oh don’t be ridiculous.” Veronica waves one hand at her, typing with her thumb. “Haircuts are like, essential. Don’t worry, the salon is super nice and discreet, we’ll put the appointment in my name, okay? I’ll take care of everything, don’t worry.”

“Thank you,” Betty says thickly, touched by Veronica’s thoughtfulness. “I… I’m never going to be able to pay you back for any of this.”

Veronica gives her a kind smile. “I told you, you’re family, you’re not paying us back.”

_Surrender, Betty. You don’t need to fight. What you need is grace._

“You’re like, the coolest person I’ve ever met,” Betty confesses shyly. “I’m sorry about that shit I said, I’m just… it’s hard not to be jealous of you. You’re gorgeous and you do all these amazing things and I’m a college dropout who spent the past two years living in a, you know… it’s, um, hard. Realizing all the stuff I missed out on.”

Veronica nods sympathetically. “I can understand that. But Betty - it goes both ways, okay?”

Betty stares at her, confused. “What do you mean?”

“Betty, you’re Archie’s best friend. When we were dating he was spending the majority of his time trying to find you. He talked to that FBI guy like every week, he was obsessed honestly. I had to tutor him just to make sure he didn’t fail out. That’s how much you matter to him. He would’ve given up anything to get you back. That’s what I was up against. This girl who was apparently perfect and knew him better than anyone, and then I meet you and you’re so pretty and you know Archie so well, and you guys are just like, completely connected mentally in a way that I’m not, and I know that he loves me but Betty, you’re like, well. You’re the first girl he ever loved. So we’re both… I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve been sharing him with you in a way since we started dating. I’m used to it. But I get that I’m a… new factor for you, and it totally makes sense you feel that way.”

“You’re - you’re jealous of me?” Betty asks incredulously.

“Not in like, an unhealthy way,” Veronica says casually. “But sure, does it make me insecure that my boyfriend has a best friend who he obviously idolizes? A bit.”

“Wow. Okay. Um, you know there’s like, nothing romantic between us, right?”

“I know,” Veronica says graciously. “You’re just - you’re very close.”

“He’s my best friend.”

“I know! I’m just… well, you and I are just going to have to get used to each other, aren’t we,” Veronica says cheerfully.

Betty nods meekly. “Yeah, I guess.”

Veronica reaches over to pat her hand lightly. “Well then, I suppose that’s settled. Eat up, you’re booked in an hour.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Hey, you don’t have to thank me, I love this stuff. When you’re ready to get a mani/pedi you just let me know.”

Betty manages to smile. “Okay.”

Betty obediently works her way through her omelette and drinks a second cup of coffee, and waits for a grace that doesn’t come but she’s still here, waiting, she hasn’t laid down and gone to sleep, she’s still fighting, just like Jughead said, _you’re hardwired to survive, Betty_ , and maybe that’s what really matters.


	11. Betty Betrayed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys, I’m so tired that I couldn’t bring myself to give this a hard edit so please forgive me of any glaring errors.

The hair salon is as nice and discreet as Veronica promised - windows covered with white drapes, mirror lined walls, black leather chairs, stylists dressed all in black who barely glance at Betty and Veronica when they walk in. Veronica pulls Betty over to the black marble desk to the right, where a young woman with milk white skin and huge blue eyes is sitting in front of a phone and a slim silver computer. She’s wearing a full face of makeup and a tight black cocktail dress, and it’s something Betty had forgotten about New York, that a certain segment of the working class (waiters, receptionists, bartenders, secretaries, baristas) were almost always obscenely gorgeous, models and actors just waiting for the right person to discover them, working jobs that allowed them to go on last minute auditions at two in the afternoon in the middle of the week.

Veronica says something to the receptionist and it takes Betty a few seconds to realize she’s switched over to French. The receptionist jumps up from her chair, giving Veronica a tight smile as she rushes off, returning from the back room a few moments later with a man dressed all in black like the others, so beautiful that Betty almost laughs at the absurdity of it. She feels disgusting compared to these people, a half-feral starved mess of a thing with the scraggly hair to match. 

She didn’t used to be vain to the point of complete self-obsession but she cared about how she looked before The Farm, where makeup wasn’t allowed and everyone wore the same thing. She used to brush her hair every day and she wore cute outfits, she used to feel confident in how she looked, especially when she made it to college and was entirely free of her mother’s control.

“Javi!” Veronica squeals, and gives the man a hug. “Thank you so much for squeezing us in, you are a godsend.”

“Mademoiselle Lodge, champagne?” the receptionist offers.

“Oui, Dauphine. Betty, do you want champagne?” Veronica asks.

Betty blinks at Veronica, it isn’t even noon yet, but then again, Veronica seems like one of those girls who comes from the kind of upper class family where drinking is just built into the culture - champagne at brunch, white wine at lunch, whiskey in the afternoon tea, a cocktail with dinner. 

“No thanks,” Betty demures.

“Un café?” Dauphine asks, with the slightest edge of desperation, like she’s dying to please. 

“I’m fine, thank you,” Betty says firmly.

Dauphine runs off to get Veronica her champagne, and the hairstylist turns to Betty, his eyes scanning over her in a way that makes her want to hide behind Veronica.

“So,” he says, and to her surprise his voice is very soft. “V said it’s been awhile since you were able to get a trim?”

“Uh, yeah.” It’s so vague but it’s not like she wants to spill her guts to this guy either, tell him that she spent almost two years washing her hair in freezing cold well water in a shower that was timed, with only a bar of soap. 

“Okay. Can I?” He gestures to her hair.

She nods and holds very still while he runs his fingers through her hair. “How much do you want to take off?” he asks.

Betty gestures loosely to her collarbone. “Maybe like here?”

“Do you have a picture?” he asks. “Any particular way you like to style it?”

“I usually throw it up in a ponytail,” Betty says, while slowly sinking into the horror of the realization that she has no pictures of herself, she used to have social media accounts on her old phone but she doesn’t remember any of the passwords, and her family photo albums were still at the house, as far as she knew, anyway….

Jesus fucking Christ. The house.

“Hang on.” Veronica is scrolling through something on her phone.

“Veronica,” Betty whispers.

“Archie has you tagged in like half his Insta posts, gimme a second.”

“Veronica,” Betty says a little louder.

“Oh, here we go!” Veronica holds out her phone to Javi and -

Betty is suddenly looking at a picture of herself at prom - her blue dress, her hair falling in shiny golden waves. Veronica scrolls down a little and there’s Betty again, standing on the edge of Sweetwater River in shorts and her Vixen hoodie, in profile, head tilted up at the sky, hair in a perfectly centered ponytail and -

There she is. The girl she’s been looking for in the mirror all week.

That’s her.

Betty is so instantly overwhelmed that she almost falls over. She hasn’t seen a photo of herself in almost two years, and everything was The Farm The Farm The Farm and at some point she’d sort of forgotten that she’d had this whole life outside of it, not literally but in the way people lie to themselves to survive. She had to make them believe she was one of them, that she had nothing and no one to lose, that she was there with good intentions.

And she hated them. Hated their stupid haircuts and their white clothes like creepy uniforms and the way there weren’t personal boundaries and how someone always seemed to be watching her and most of all she hated _him_ , not only for all the things he did but because the first time she got close to him, body shaking and heart clenching in her chest as she tried not to throw up, Polly holding her hand, introducing them as Betty stared at a man that appeared to be made of sunlight, he started to talk and Betty thought:

_Really? This guy?_

He was smart but nothing special, and she was smart enough to know when someone is bullshitting you, trying to distract you with it so you can’t tell they have nothing real to say, that it’s all smoke and mirrors. The grandeur of it all, the spectacle of Betty trembling as her blindfold was removed and Polly, next to her in a white robe, introducing her to a man who looked like an angel and spoke like a charlatan, a fraud, a delusional narcissistic.

Betty would know after all, she was raised by one.

She couldn’t believe it, she almost laughed out loud but then she saw the fervency in Polly’s eyes and that’s when Betty got really, truly scared, because if she could see so easily that this man was insane why couldn’t anyone else?

At some point Betty realizes the receptionist has returned with Veronica’s champagne and is joining in on the conversation because she gestures loosely at Betty’s chin, which makes Betty startle back into Veronica, who almost spills her drink.

“Betty,” Veronica admonishes her gently, and turns back to Dauphine. “I don’t know, do you think that’s too short?”

“I think it would look very chic. Javi?”

The hairstylist strokes his chin. “Maybe a lob.”

“Can we do something about this?” Veronica asks, making an incomprehensible gesture around Betty’s hair.”

Javi and Dauphine immediately nod their heads and Betty can feel herself starting to zone out, that feeling coming back from the hospital, like she was a body to be washed and prepared and dressed, a broken little Betty doll.

 _Feeling like a victim again?_ his voice whispers in her mind.

 _Shut up,_ she whispers back. _Shut up shut up shut up._

_Poor, poor, Betty. Always feeling sorry for herself. Poor little girl, abandoned over and over again. Poor little unwanted thing._

“Betty!” Veronica gives her that look, like, _snap out of it!_

Betty flinches. “Sorry. What?”

Veronica sighs and takes a large sip of champagne. “Time to get your hair washed, come on.”

Veronica and Javi lead her to the back room and introduce her to an older woman with mahogany skin and purple dreadlocks named Kendra, who gives Betty a warm smile and leads her over to one of the shampoo stations. 

Javi disappears to set up his station and Veronica leans against the wall, slipping her phone out of her purse as she sips champagne with her other hand.

“I just need to check my email, work stuff,” Veronica explains.

“Okay,” Betty murmurs, sitting down in the chair in front of the shampoo basin.

Kendra sits on a stool next to her and turns the water on. “Okay, lean back for me, sugar.”

Her voice is warm and rich and it makes Betty want to wrap herself around this woman and take a nap, sink into something soft and deep, something like _mother_ but with none of the usual anxieties that she associates with that word, something bigger, more, a different kind of yearning for something she can’t quite identify.

Betty rests her neck against the padded chair and lets her hair tip back into the water. She stares up at the ceiling as hands come to her hair, soaking it in the water, and Betty thinks about her mother, getting into some tub and never climbing out because they held her down under the water and this is how she died, helpless, with people who didn’t love her, who let her drown, and Betty chokes on air like there’s water in her lungs too.

 _Oh fuck_ , she thinks. _Oh fuck, of fuck_.

“You’re okay, honey.” Gentle fingers work through her roots. “Just relax.”

Betty shivers and closes her eyes, trying not to cry. She focuses on the feeling of the woman’s fingers in her hair, the soothing tone of her voice, and breathes, and tries not to think about her mother in a dirt grave somewhere, bloated and blue and gone forever.

*

Betty walks out the hair salon with bouncy, blown out waves, the ends of her hair tickling the tops of her shoulders. Veronica paid for it of course, quietly slipping Kendra and Javi cash while Dauphine ran her card.

“We should take that haircut out to lunch!” Veronica says cheerfully as they get into the backseat of the car.

Betty sinks back in her seat, the idea of having to go to another place, with more people, is exhausting. “I’m kind of tired.”

“Oh.” Veronica gives her a sheepish smile. “Of course, I’m sorry. How about we pick something up and eat it at home?”

The word _home_ makes something in Betty’s chest twinge and she thinks about her house, all the things she left behind, yearbooks and photo albums and school papers and _the closet Polly would hide her and Betty in when their parents fought, and the wall with pencil markings charting their heights, the backyard where she and Archie played tag and pirates and superheroes for hours_ -

“Betty?”

“Sorry.” Betty rubs her eyes. “Thanks, yeah that would be great. Can I um, just, can I ask you a question?”

Veronica’s already looking up something on her phone. “Sure. Andre, we’re going to Amy’s to pick up.”

“Yes, ma’m,” he replies, and pulls the car out into traffic.

“Okay, I’m gonna pull up the menu so we can order, Betty, what did you want to ask me?”

“It’s okay if you don’t know but I know you and Archie started dating not that long after I… left, so I thought, maybe you’d know but I can ask Archie, it’s just bothering me” -

“Oh my god, Betty, it’s fine, you can ask me anything.” Veronica taps her phone screen. “Romain mix or dark greens?”

“What?”

“For your salad.”

“Oh, um, dark greens I guess.”

Veronica taps her screen again. “Veggies?”

“Veronica, you said I could” -

“I know, I know, just let me do this real quick so it’ll be ready when we get there. Mushrooms, cucumber, peppers, olives, broccoli, jicama, tomatoes” -

“Um, mushroom and cucumber is fine.”

“Okay. Protein - you can get salmon, chicken, turkey, or tofu?”

“Tofu I guess.” Betty really doesn’t care that much, she’s not even hungry.

“Okay.” Veronica types with her thumbs for a minute and then locks her phone. “Okay, done, I’m sorry. What did you want to ask me?”

Betty picks at her cuticles. “Do you um, I was, well, you know Archie and I grew up next door to each other, right?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, so when I went to NYU my mom still lived in Riverdale, in the house I grew up in, and all our stuff was in there, and I’m not exactly sure when she joined The Farm full stop, after my sister did, but I never… I never found out what happened to the house so I was wondering um, if for some reason you or Archie know what happened to it?

“Oh Betty.” Veronica gives her an intensely sympathetic look. “Yeah, so um, after we took finals junior year Archie’s mom called him, I guess she was sort of keeping touch with your old neighbors in Riverdale, and someone told her that the bank had taken back the house. I guess your mom missed some mortgage payments and then no one could find her, so…”

Betty’s fingers go _pickpickpick._ “So it’s just, gone?”

“Well, um… not exactly.”

Betty looks sideways at her. “What does that mean?”

“The bank would’ve sold it, anyway,” Veronica says, sounding oddly defensive.

“What are you talking about?”

Veronica sighs. “Mrs. Andrews flew out here after she heard about the house. Archie was freaking out, he practically grew up in it too and he - he never thought he wouldn’t find you, okay? He couldn’t handle the idea of you coming back to no home.”

“Veronica, c’mon, there’s no way he and his mom could’ve afforded to buy the house back from the bank.”

“Of course not,” Veronica agrees. “So I did.”

Betty stares at her. “What?”

“All cash, very hush-hush. I don’t like to do this, but I called Daddy and asked him to front me. Don’t worry though, the point is I’m the homeowner and your house is safe.”

“Your dad… loaned you cash to buy my family’s house back from the bank?” Betty asks in disbelief.

“Enough cash can buy you almost anything,” Veronica responds sagely.

“So all our stuff… we didn’t lose it?”

“No. Well, it’s all in storage, I’m renting the house out at the moment, I couldn’t pass on an obvious money generator like that. But the rentals are short term and when you’re ready, I’ll sell it back to you.”

Betty presses the side of her head against the glass. “I can’t really see myself in the financial situation to buy a house, like, for, I don’t know, at least fifteen years. I haven’t even looked into my student debt situation.”

Veronica gives her a sly smile. “Don’t worry. I hear the owner isn’t looking for much.”

“I can’t believe you bought my house for me,” Betty murmurs. “Or for Archie, you probably did it for Archie, but still. That’s like... I think that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done with me.”

Veronica shrugs, like it’s not big deal. “Well you know what to say. The best place the place to invest your money in is property.”

*

Andre picks up the salads for them and drives back to the Pembrooke. They eat at the kitchen island, sunlight pouring through the windows and making all that white gleam. Betty eats with one hand pressed against her forehead, resisting the headache that’s starting to build behind her eyes. 

She wonders if Veronica would mind if Betty escaped to her room to lay down when she’s done choking down her salad. She wonders if she’ll ever get any of her stamina back or if everything will wipe her out like this. All she’s done is gone out for breakfast and get a haircut but she feels like she’s run a marathon.

Veronica’s phone trills, making Betty flinch and have to steady herself on the stool. Veronica reads a text and looks at Betty over the top of her phone.

“How do you feel about visitors?”

Betty’s stomach tightens. “Who?”

“Just Katy and Josie, they want to know if they can stop by with cupcakes later this afternoon.”

She really isn’t in the mood to socialize more but Katy was so nice to her the other day and Betty hasn’t seen Josie in like two years. They weren’t close at school but they had Archie in common and Josie was always nice to her, sharing her body glitter and hanging out with her at bars when Archie played open night mics.

“Okay,” Betty agrees reluctantly.

Veronica raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure? I can tell them no.”

“They won’t stay too long, right?”

Veronica nods solemnly although her mouth twists up a little. “I promise they won’t stay long.”

“Okay,” Betty says, and snaps the cardboard lid of her salad over the container, traces over the _Amy’s Cafe_ logo with one finger. “Is it okay if I save this for later?”

“Of course.” Veronica taps her fingernails against the island. “You know you can always like, tell me no, right? If you don’t want to do something?”

Betty almost trips halfway to the freezer. “I know.”

Katy and Josie come over around three, after Betty has taken a pill for anxiety and changed into one of the vee sweaters Katy brought her. She’s sitting on the couch in the living room with Veronica when the buzzer goes off, watching The Real Housewives of New York, a newer season Betty missed while she was gone but is essentially the same in aesthetic - the same Botoxed faces and acrylic nails, same petty dramas, recycled storylines - and therefore soothing in its comforting familiarity.

Veronica goes over to tell Smithers to buzz the girls up and Betty drags herself across the room to wait next to her. They knock on the door a minute later and Veronica lets them in, the foyer exploding into a burst of color. Katy’s wearing a pink bodysuit with a blue tulle full length skirt and a white motorcycle jacket, a pink and white bakery bag held in her hands. Josie's right behind her, wearing an amazing neon orange animal print jumpsuit with black ankle boots and a short fuzzy back jacket.

“Betty oh my gosh, you look amazing,” Katy squeals. “Who did your hair?”

“Javi,” Veronica says casually, and Katy squeals again.

“Hey, Betty,” Josie says softly. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“You too.” Betty offers Josie a tight smile.

“Come on, to the kitchen.” Veronica gently herds them through the dining room to the living room.

Betty sits at what is becoming her usual stool at the island and Josie hops up on the one next to her whole Veronica gets plates for Katy, who carefully unpacks each cupcake and helps Veronica pass them out.

“Oh my god,” Betty says faintly, staring down at the marbled pink and white, strawberry topped monstrosity on her plate. “What is this?”

Katy grins. “From the current hottest bakery in the neighborhood, Betty, this is a Strawberry Creme bomb.”

“A strawberry bomb?”

“They call all their cupcakes bombs.” Josie points to the label on the bag that reads _The Bomb Bakery_. “V’s got Hazelnut Chocolate Swirl, Katy’s got Unicorn Sprinkles” -

“Birthday cake confetti cupcake with vanilla frosting and as much sprinkles as it can hold!” Katy explains, licking her lips.

“And this is my personal favorite, Berry Blast.” Josie points to her purple cupcake topped with raspberries and blueberries. “I remember you did strawberry when we got froyo that one time and took a guess. It’s a strawberry cupcake with vanilla and strawberry frosting.”

“Oh wow, thanks.” Betty looks down at her cupcake, wondering how the hell she's going to be able to eat that much sugar and not get sick. “I forgot how New York has a new hot dessert like every few months.”

“I know, right?” Katy giggles. “Remember cronuts?”

“Oh my god.” Veronica rolls her eyes.

Betty picks at her cupcake and pretends to listen to the rest of the girls talk about cafes and restaurants she doesn’t know, parties she never went to, an entire life she gave up for Polly. Betty tries to eat but the strawberries on her cupcake taste sickly sweet and Betty thinks about poison injected into an apple, plants covered in pesticides, GMO grains, breads full of sugar, milk chock full of hormones.

Okay, so maybe Edgar had a few conspiracy theories about the mainstream food supply that stuck.

Betty watches them, three beautiful girls who look like they’re in a fashion magazine with their amazing outfits and perfectly applied makeup, eating their cupcakes bombs delicately in between giggles so they don’t smear their lipstick. It’s like there’s a glass wall between them and her, she can’t imagine what it would be like, really, to be Veronica or Katy or Josie: beautiful and stylish and happy.

 _We aren’t like them._

Polly, whispering in Betty’s head so clearly, just like her memory of Polly the night she said it, boney arms wrapped tightly around Betty in the dark.

_We aren’t like other people. We’re special, Betty. He chose us._

That was Polly though, always worshipping false idols, men who promised her the world and broke her in return.

 _I don’t want to be special,_ Betty had whispered back.

 _But you are,_ Polly had murmured. _Of course you’re special. You’re my sister._

“Betty.” Veronica gives her a patient smile. 

“Yeah?” Head down, hoping the other girls won’t notice her embarrassment at getting caught zoning out. 

“Is your cupcake okay?” Josie asks tentatively.

“Oh, it’s fine, it’s great, thank you,” Betty responds quickly.

“Betty.” Veronica’s voice is gentle. “You aren’t eating it.”

“Oh.” Betty slides her hands under her thighs. “No, it’s great, really, it’s just, we weren’t allowed to have sugar at - where I was, so it’s been forever since I’ve had something like this and it’s really, um, it’s really sweet, and it’s just, like, a lot.”

Her cheeks flush and Betty resists the urge to go excuse herself, but next to her Josie nods and slowly reaches out to pat Betty’s shoulder.

“Of course,” she says softly. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks,” Betty mumbles, unsure of what to do with this show of kindness, and to her relief Veronica swiftly changes the topic.

*

By the time Archie comes back around six Betty is back on the couch watching more Housewives, numb from another anti-anxiety pill. He lets himself in loudly, announcing himself, backpack dropping on the floor as he walks into the living room and looks around.

“Hey, you got a haircut!” he says, grinning. “Sit up, let me see.”

Betty drags herself up from the corner of the couch she’s balled into and shakes her hair out, feeling self conscious, but Archie just leans over and kisses the crown of her head.

“You look like you again,” he says softly. “Is V in our room?”

“Yeah.” Betty gives him a teary smile, because Archie sees her too, the girl she used to be, the girl she thought she lost.

“Alright. I’m gonna take a shower, you cool with pizza for dinner again?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Okay, I’ll go order and jump in a shower, I’ll be back in a little bit.”

“Okay.”

She snuggles back into the couch and curls up under a throw blanket. She’s so relieved that she’s done for the day, she doesn’t have to go anywhere or talk to anyone except Archie, doesn’t have to smile and pretend to be normal.

She’s on the verge of falling asleep when Archie and Veronica come back out. He’s wearing sweats like Betty, damp hair pushes off his face, but Veronica is dressed for work in a black cocktail dress, ankle boots, and an oversized shearling lined motorcycle jacket.

“Wow you look cool,” Betty says, dumb and sleepy, but Veronica just grins and blows her a kiss.

“Have a good night in with Archie,” she tells Betty, and leans over the couch to hug her. “Hey, I’m proud of you. You have a long day and you did great.”

“No I didn’t,” Betty mumbles, but she’s smiling.

“Yes you did,” Veronica insists. “Baby steps.”

Archie walks Veronica to the door and kisses her goodbye before locking it behind her and joining Betty on the couch.

“Long day?” He stretches out opposite her, feet resting on the coffee table.

“Yeah.”

“It was nice of you to let Ronnie take you out, she says she had a good time.”

“Uh, I don’t know about that.” She laughs awkwardly. “I wouldn’t say I’m good company right now.”

“That’s okay. She said she could tell you were trying, and that um, means a lot to me. That you guys get along.”

“I know.”

“Okay. Betty?”

“What?”

He makes a face. “Do we have to watch this?”

Betty laughs and throws a pillow at him.

She lets Archie switch it to a superhero movie that came out when she was gone and fifteen minutes later Smithers buzzes them to let them know the pizza has arrived. She and Archie eat it on the couch with plates and a roll of paper towels between them, careful not to stain Veronica’s beautiful cream couch.

“Hey, I don’t have to go to The Center tomorrow, is there anything you want to do?” he asks.

Betty nibbles at her crust. “Not really.”

“Was it too much?” Archie sucks tomato sauce off his thumb. “Today.”

“Um…” Betty doesn’t want to lie but she doesn’t want to get Veronica in trouble either. “It was just a lot.”

“Is it… still hard to be around people?”

“Yeah,” she admits, curling in on herself a little.

“Hey.” Archie pokes her leg with her foot. “Hang in there, okay? I’m with Veronica, you’re doing great.”

Betty gives him a crooked smile. “Thanks, Arch.”

When they’re done with the pizza Archie puts the leftovers in the fridge and talks Betty into watching another superhero movie. She doesn’t mind, because she’s floating on pills and wrapped up in a soft blanket and she’s with Archie, she’s safe, she’s okay.

The buzzer goes off. Archie looks confused as he lopes over to the buzzer and presses his finger to it. “Yes?”

“Special Agent Charles Smith is here for Miss Cooper?”

Archie and Betty stare blankly at each other for a moment.

“Okay, send him up,” Archie says, and paces in front of the door.

“Do you know what this is about?” he asks Betty.

“No.” She sits up a little bit, reaching up to her face to make sure she doesn’t have pizza crumbs stuck to her mouth.

He exhales sharply. “Me either.”

A minute later there’s a sharp knock at the door and Archie lets in Agent Smith into the apartment.

“Hey kids, sorry to drop in on you like this.” Agent Smith looks tense, briefcase clutched in his hand.

“That’s okay,” Betty says softly.

He sets his briefcase carefully down on the coffee table and glances at Archie as he sits down on the couch next to Betty. “Is Ms. Lodge home?”

“It’s just the two of us right now.” Archie heaves himself into a chair.

Agent Smith nods and looks at Betty. “We’ve had a break.”

Betty blinks at him. “What?”

“We got a call, a tip, this morning from a guy who lives about a half hour west of Ithaca” -

“ _What?_ ”

He holds up one hand. “I know, just hang on” -

“You said you thought Polly was in Canada!”

“It appears we were mistaken.” Calm as always. “This man owns a gas station. He got robbed over the summer and installed a security camera on the property. He has a video from last night I want you to see.”

He withdraws his laptop from his briefcase and opens it, powers it on and pulls up a file. Archie leans forward so he can see better as Agent Smith starts the video and the three of them get quiet, eyes on the screen.

It reveals a street at night, single laned, empty, the gas station on the left side of the screen. Betty watches, the breath caught in her chest, as a figure appears at the bottom left corner of the screen and starts walking towards the gas station, back to the camera.

“Who” -

“Just wait,” Agents Smith tells her quietly.

The person goes inside but comes back out a few minutes later, baseball cap tugged over their face, thin legs in a pair of torn jeans, a plastic bag looped around one wrist. A car appears at the top of the screen and crawls down until it stops level with the person outside the gas station.

“Watch,” Agent Smith whispers.

The person gets into the car and they whip off the baseball cap as the driver leans across the car and their face catches the light and -

And the person who’s in the passenger seat is Polly, skinny, straggly Polly, smiling big as she leans over the console to kiss Edgar Evernever.

“Oh,” Betty whispers, and it’s like she can feel it, the energy he always talked about, her life force, draining out of her.

Polly isn’t dead. She isn’t locked in the dark, she isn’t being tortured. She’s fine, she’s with Edgar, and she looks happy about it, and holy shit, is this really the reason she refused to leave with Betty? Not because she was too weak or too faithful but because she was secretly having an affair with the man who got their mother killed?

Onscreen her sister and her former cult leader kiss against and then the video ends, and Betty’s head spins, trying to make sense of what she just watched.

She knew Polly revered Edward, trusted Edward, but loved Edward? Like that?

It’s insane. It’s actually insane.

“That’s all we got.” Agent Smith leans forward and shuts his laptop. “That’s definitely her though right? Your sister?”

Betty doesn’t trust herself to speak, so she nods, fingers twisting in the blanket. “Mhmm.”

“She paid with cash so we can’t track through a card, but that’s okay. We know they’re still in the country, I know we don’t have them yet but we’re so much closer Betty, I promise.”

Betty blinks rapidly against the rush of blood pounding in her head. “Is that everything?”

“Excuse me?” he asks politely.

“Is that everything you wanted to show me?” she asks stiffly.

“Yes,” he says gently, putting his laptop back in his briefcase. “That’s everything.”

“I’d like you to go then, please,” she says, in a voice that doesn’t sound like hers.

“Betty,” Archie starts, but Agent Smith shakes his head.

“It’s fine,” he tells Archie. “I understand.”

He shakes Archie’s hand and picks up his briefcase. “I’ll check in with you tomorrow, I can see myself out.”

Betty sits frozen on the couch while Agent Smith leaves, quietly shutting the door behind her. “I think I’m going to go to bed,” she tells Archie.

“Betty, come on.”

He reaches for her but she twists out his grip, arms coming defensively to her sides. “I’m fine, I just want to go to bed.”

“Betty, you are not fine” -

“Okay, yes, I know that, Jesus! Can I have a little time to fucking process?”

“Okay, okay.” He holds his hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry, of course you can go to bed.”

She sags at the easy victory. “I’m just really tired.”

Archie looks heartbroken for her. “I know you are.”

“Tell Veronica I said thank you? For today?”

“Of course.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Betty rushes away, heart beating so hard it hurts, stumbling wildly down the hallway. She makes it to her room, shuts the door, and slides down against it until she’s sitting on the floor, head pillowed on her knees as an alternate explanation for everything that’s happened creeps over her like a sickness, a vine wrapping around her chest and squeezing hard.

She can’t understand it, Polly, dressed in regular clothes, buying what looked like junk food from a gas station, kissing Edgar like he was her boyfriend and not some man she treated like a deity. It doesn’t make sense, why aren’t they with the rest of The Farmies, why do they look like a couple out on a road trip?

And then a worse idea occurs to Betty, so bad she almost throws up pizza all over the floor.

What if Betty didn’t really leave Polly, after all? What if Polly left _her?_


	12. Surrender

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a trigger warning for massive amounts of angst and a description of self harm.

Betty stays up the whole night, even with all those pills in her system. She stays in the guest room behind the locked door, curtain shut, curled under the covers on the mattress that’s both soft and firm, memory foam or something, so luxurious it actually feels a little uncomfortable.

By the time the sun comes up Betty’s moved past tears and betrayal and disbelief into numbness, she’s exhausted and resigned to what she saw on that video last night.

What it could mean.

In some strange way it feels like a relief. She’s sacrificed almost two years of her life to her older sister, trying to save her, bring her back home, wake her up, get Polly to remember who she is. 

And Polly chose Edgar.

Betty never got Polly to admit it, that Edgar was a fraud, a cruel sadistic con man. But Polly knew Betty was hurting, Polly knew about her back and the dark room and her bones starting to push through as her body fat and muscle withered away. Polly held Betty at night like Betty was her most precious thing in the world and whispered _sorrysorrysorrybaby_ and Betty believed her, that Polly was sorry, because growing up Polly took the brunt of their mom for her and knew how to get Betty out of the room when their dad’s temper unexpectedly appeared. Betty expected her to be sorry.

She protected Betty. She was Betty’s big sister. It was her _job_.

And Betty tried to protect Polly too, because they were sisters and Betty loves her and Polly is the last family member she has, (don’t think about it, hiseyeshishands, lifesentencebehindbars, maximumsecurity). 

And now Polly is gone. 

And Betty is free.

She doesn’t have to do anything, be anything. Polly doesn’t need Betty to save her. Polly’s with Edgar. Happily, apparently. 

Were they together before, at The Farm? Impossible. But then again, there’s Betty’s narcissism showing, the part of her Edgar explained makes Betty feel superior, like she knows more than everyone else, like she really thinks she’s smarter than everyone around her.

But she never saw the signs, if there were any. Polly didn’t spend more time alone with Edgar than the others did, she never said anything to Betty about him other than to wax lyrical about his greatness, his superiority. Her idol. The one who would lead them to the ultimate light - ascension, evolution, utopia. Freedom. Bliss.

How does Polly reconcile what Edgar promised - peace, harmony with nature, heaven on Earth - with the reality of running from the law, hiding behind baseball caps, eating gas station food? How can she look at Edgar now, after everything, and still see someone worth protecting? What has he done to Polly, to make her believe she’s on the right side?

Betty forces herself to consider the possibility that Polly really is in love with him. That Betty didn’t know because she didn’t want to know, was incapable of imagining something so revolting and therefore didn’t see what could have been happening right under her nose.

Regardless of what Polly’s feelings might be for Edgar are though, there is one thing Betty knows is true:

Her sister chose a god over her. 

And really, how can Betty be surprised, that Polly would let Betty go so she could be with a man who glows like the sun and makes beautiful, empty promises?

She doesn’t need Betty anymore.

No one needs Betty anymore. Her mother is gone (don’t think about it, bloatedandblue, deadinagrave), and Archie is living the highlife, he has a job he cares about and a beautiful girlfriend and a gorgeous Manhattan apartment and friends, he has an entire life that Betty doesn’t belong to.

And that’s everyone. Everyone she's had a deep intimate relationship with, people who are her family or close to it, are either dead, long gone, or doing just great without her.

No one needs her. She’s all alone.

The trill of a phone snaps her out of her trance. Betty jumps, twitchy, and has to dig around her room to find her phone in the pocket of the leggings she wore yesterday. Veronica has texted her twice, first to ask if she’s up and then to request that Betty meet her and Archie in the kitchen for breakfast.

Betty tosses the phone onto the bed and presses her hands against her aching head.

Maybe it’s better this way. 

Betty can get out of Veronica and Archie’s life like the intruder she is and…

Something. She’ll do something.

It doesn’t matter. She’s been released of all her earthly contracts, as Edgar would put it.

Her parents are gone. Polly chose a false god over her. Archie’s moved on with his life. And Betty’s just a ghost. She has no purpose anymore, no reason to be here. No reason to exist.

She strips her clothes off and drags herself to the bathroom. She looks awful in the mirror, puffy eyes and blotchy skin. Pale skin and sharp cheekbones, chapped lips, all of it framed by limp waves.

There’s practically nothing of her left. Her face has lost its youthful glow and her lack of color makes her look ill. Her eyes are too big for her face, bloodshot and sunken in.

This is what Polly and The Farm did to her. Starved her and beat the life out of her, broke her down until she was skin and bones and pain and Betty let them, she’d let them do anything to her to save Polly, to not be the only Cooper left. 

She and Polly were a set. The Cooper girls. Pretty in pink, bows in their blond hair, sugar and spice and everything nice, at least when their parents were looking. They were good at hiding the other things, the darkness imprinted into their DNA. Polly hooked up with football players at parties and in cars and by the banks of Sweetwater River, and Betty sliced open her palms with her fingernails and played with her food. Their outlets were different but their essential makeup was the same, two girls in a pressure cooker threatening to blow, with only each other to rely on.

And now Betty’s alone, half a bookend, a younger sister without her sibling. The daughter of a dead woman and a murderer. She’s nothing.

Betty takes a washcloth and runs it under cold water, squeezes it out and lays it over her eyes. She sits on the bathmat for a few minutes, knees to her chest and head tilted back, hoping her eyes will look better because she’s sure Veronica will say something if Betty walks into the kitchen looking like she was up all night crying.

When the washcloth doesn’t feel cold anymore Betty tosses it into the hamper and gets into the shower. She turns the water on hot and leans against the tiled wall, trying to keep her eyes open. She’s so tired and the idea of getting dressed, brushing her hair, sitting down to breakfast like there’s a point to any of it makes her want to slide down the wall and lie down on the floor of the shower, drown in her despair, give into the pull in the center of her chest.

And this time there’s nothing to pull her back. There isn’t any reason for Betty to be strong anymore. No one needs her to be. 

She half heartedly washes up, shaves, shampoos her hair, as if it matters that she’s clean. Nothing feels like it matters, not anymore. 

She lost Polly, and that was the only thing that mattered. Her one mission, a failure. 

“I’m sorry Mom,” Betty whispers, hoping against the odds that it was peaceful for her, that her mother wasn’t afraid, that there was a tunnel of light waiting for her and not oblivion. 

How can Polly love the man who allegedly let her mother drown?

How could Polly have let Betty run away that night? Did she know what was coming, what Betty’s rebellion would trigger? If Betty had stayed would everything be the same at The Farm right now? Just another day with a bunch of psychos who brainwashed her sister and let her mother die?

Betty smacks her hand against her forehead. Too many questions without answers.

She gets out of the shower and wraps herself in a towel, squeezes her hair out over the sink and shuffles back to her room (not her room, the guest room, no matter what Veronica says. Betty doesn’t belong here, it can’t be her room). She pulls on clean underwear and one of the bralettes from Katy, tugs her Vixens sweatshirt over her head and finds a pair of black cotton joggers in the drawer with her new leggings, slim cut and soft. She pulls them on and goes over to her door, unlocks it, and pauses.

She doesn’t want to go out yet. She doesn’t want to have to talk to Archie and Veronica, deal with their sympathy, put on a show for them so they don’t obsessively worry about her more than they already are. Betty sighs to herself and goes back to the bathroom, gently closes the door, and sits down in the closed toilet lid.

She takes a few deep breaths with her eyes closed, wondering how long she can hide out here before someone comes to retrieve her. Not long, probably. 

She doesn’t really care. She can’t bring herself to care about anything right now. Damp hair sticks to her cheeks and she scrapes it back with her fingers, ties her hair up in a ponytail without bothering to brush it first. She remembers her pills in the cabinet and it seems pointless but she swallows one of the antidepressants with water from the tap and shakes one of the anxiety meds into her palm. Betty pops it into her mouth and chews it up, fully aware that this kind of medication is for panic attacks or severe anxiety and if she takes them consistently like she has been she’s going to build up a tolerance, but again - she doesn’t care. It just doesn’t seem worth it right now, to worry about something as trivial as that, when her father is locked up for life and her mother is dead and her sister is gone.

Betty looks at her reflection as she shuts the cabinet. Pulling her hair back has only emphasized her sharp bone structure, her eyes aren’t quite as puffy now but they're still bloodshot and her pallor hasn’t improved, her chapped lips looking more purple than pink.

She looks dead, like a body dressed up like a former cheerleader in her high pony and team sweatshirt. Something dried up and hollowed out, beyond saving.

She rests her fingertips on the edge of the sink as the bathroom spins around her. Everything is a dizzying swirl of cream and soft light and Betty crumples over with a dry sob, because underneath all of her not caring is the wrenching pain of being abandoned, of realizing no one in her family loved her enough to stick around for her. 

_Poor Betty, thrice abandoned_. Edgar’s voice in her head is mocking. _Poor little orphan girl. Because everything is about you, isn’t it Betty? The baby, always craving attention. Demanding to be seen. Well, who are you now Betty? Who are you without them? When it’s just you, a star with no one to shine for? How does it feel, to know that underneath everything you’re just a scared little girl? All that neediness and desperation for love with nowhere to put it. Pathetic._

“You’re pathetic,” she says out loud to her reflection. 

So her sister left her. Let Betty leave her, whatever. Betty made her choice and Polly made hers. And Betty is acting exactly like the person Edgar thought she was - sophomoric, needy, judgemental. If she was really clear, in her light, she would have grace, she would respect Polly’s path as being different than hers and not feel the need to control her sister’s destiny.

She would let Polly go.

And maybe that’s all there is for Betty to do. She did everything she could, sacrificed everything she had, and in the end it didn’t matter. 

_Surrender,_ Edgar murmurs. _Surrender._

“Okay,” Betty whispers to herself. 

She can do that. After fighting for so long only to be betrayed by her blood, there’s a certain appeal in giving up. In letting go. Surrendering.

It’s a rush, the way the switch flips so quickly. 

Her body goes loose, all the tension draining out as she sinks to her knees and finds that manicure kit in the drawer where she put it back after she found it the other day. Betty opens it over the sink, where those beautiful little scissors shine in their black case. She takes them out, moving on autopilot. She isn’t thinking about what’s she’s doing, she doesn’t have a plan, she’s just letting her body take over while the part of her that’s Betty retreats inside herself. 

She’s been fighting with everything she has for two years and she can’t do it anymore, not after a defeat as crushing as this. She lost, and sometimes the right thing to do after being completely outmaneuvered is to acknowledge and accept it. Make peace with it.

Let go. 

She rolls her sleeves up and sits back down on the toilet. The scissors are small and sharp, and for a minute just holding them is enough. She remembers that feeling she used to get when she hurt herself in high school - the calmness, the power, how she didn’t feel any pain until after it was over. The clarity it gave her. The rush of having that kind of control over her body.

The only kind of control she has left.

She opens the scissors and holds the tip of the blade against her wrist, silver gleaming against paper white skin and blue veins. She pushes it in, just a bit, enough to feel a prick, and lets out a shuddery sigh. Her head is blissfully clear, there’s nothing left anymore but this room, this broken body holding a pair of scissors, and she doesn’t think, she doesn’t feel anything, she isn’t anything but a heart pumping blood and thin skin wrapped over bones and shaking fingers gripping the scissors tight.

Her hand drags the blade down her wrist in one swift motion, automatic. Like she’d planned it all long, like she meant to. Like she’s been waiting ever since she got here to do it, and maybe some secret, subconscious part of her has been.

Her head tips back at the shock of it, the rush, a moment of beautiful nothingness before the pain starts creeping in.

She looks down at her wrist, she’s made a clean neat cut straight down the middle of it, the skin pink and starting to swell. Beads of blood well up and Betty watches, frozen, as they coalesce and make a stream of red that starts to run down her palm. The stream becomes a river, branching off and rolling down her fingers, splattering onto her pants and the white floor and she can’t move, transfixed by the dark rivulets criss crossing her pale skin.

The bathroom door bangs open and the scissors fall to the floor with a clatter. Betty whips around, holding her bleeding wrist close to her chest, and Veronica is standing in the doorway, eyes full of horror as she stares at Betty.

“ _Archie!_ ” Veronica begins to scream. “Oh my god, Archie! Archie!”

Betty stares dizzily at Veronica, who’s looking around the bathroom in horror, hands pressed against her mouth as she sobs. Neither of them move, shocked into stillness by the amount of blood flowing from Betty’s wrist. It doesn’t really hurt, not yet anyway, or maybe she’s in shock, but she’s transfixed, fascinated by her body, at what she did to herself. 

Archie bursts into the bathroom and as soon as he sees Betty he pushes past Veronica towards her. “What happened?!”

Betty blinks at him, registering that he looks terrified but not feeling anything about it, that pill must’ve kicked in because she doesn’t feel anything except a deep pulse in her left arm.

“Jesus Christ, hold your hand up!” Archie shouts at her, and when Betty doesn’t react he grabs her left hand, blood and all, and holds it above her chest.

“Keep it there,” he instructs firmly, and starts digging through the bathroom drawers. “Veronica, call Andre and tell him to pull the car up.”

“Okay,” Veronica sniffs.

Archie pulls out a washcloth and wraps it around Betty’s wrist tightly, keeping it up above her chest. “I’m getting your shoes. Don't move, I’ll be right back.”

Betty feels slow, she doesn’t understand why both of them are panicking and rushing around. “Why?”

Archie ducks his head so they’re eye level. “Did you mean to cut so deep?”

She blinks heavily at him. “What?”

“Betty, you’re bleeding everywhere.”

She understands what he’s saying but it doesn’t make sense, she wasn’t trying to _hurt_ herself, not seriously, she was just in a weird headspace, she wasn’t thinking clearly. She didn’t do anything that bad.

But then she looks up at her wrist and the washcloth is already soaked dark, and she realizes the edges of her vision are blurry and she can’t feel her hands and her wrist _hurts_ , and a jolt of fear snaps her back into full consciousness.

“You’re taking me to the ER?” she asks tremulously.

Archie grits his jaw. “You need stitches.”

“Oh.” Something her chest caves in and Betty swallows a sob. “No, Archie, it was, it was just an accident, I didn’t mean to.”

“You still need stitches.”

“I know but it was an accident, you have to say it was an accident!” Her voice comes out hysterical. 

“Betty” -

“Please,” she cries. “They’ll put me in one of those places again, and they lock you in Archie, I can’t, I can’t do it again, please don’t let them take me away, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

“Betty, stop, hey, stop it.” Archie holds her still, she didn’t even realize she was throwing her arms around. “I’m not going to let them take you away.”

“Andre’s gonna be out front in two minutes,” Veronica says tightly. 

“Can you get Betty a pair of shoes please?” Archie asks her.

“I can’t,” Betty sobs. “No, Archie, no.”

“Of course.” Veronica rushes out and comes back with slip on sneakers.

“Betty, calm down,” Archie orders uselessly, and has to jam her feet into her shoes while she cries and begs him not to.

“Stop it,” Archie finally hisses, smacking her heel into her shoe and standing up. “Come on, let's go.”

Betty sobs into the crook of her right arm and Archie has to walk her out of the bathroom with his arm around her shoulders. “Where’s her stuff?” he asks Veronica.

“I don’t know!” Veronica whirls around the room and finds Betty’s phone on the bed. “Betty, where’s your license?”

Betty ignores her in favor of hyperventilating, they’re gonna put a needle through her skin and drug her and take her away from Archie, how could Betty let herself do this, how could she be so stupid? 

“Betty, it’s gonna be fine, breathe.” Archie’s holding her like he knows she’d collapse without his arm propping her up.

“Found it!” Veronica crows, and plucks it from the nightstand. “Here, Archiekins, use my card when you’re there, okay? I’ll deal with it.”

“Thanks, Ronnie.” Archie takes Betty’s phone and license from Veronica and shoves them into his pocket.

“Go, go, I’ll deal with everything,” Veronica says.

“Okay. I’ll text you when we’re there, love you.”

“Love you too, go, Betty’s getting really pale.”

“Oh shit, yeah. Come on Betty, we have to go.”

Betty’s still on a crying jag, she doesn’t do anything but lean into Archie, weak enough to fall to the floor but he’s holding her so tight she stays upright anyway.

“Betty.” Archie’s voice is softer. “We really need to go. You’re hurt. I need you to come with me, okay? I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”

She doesn’t have another option. She’s out of moves, she’s been defeated again. It’s over. 

She surrenders, and lets Archie lead her out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so sorry guys, I promise there are lots of cuddles and comfort coming.


End file.
